Coronavirus: awaiting for the new wave

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Video about qurantine to enter NZ.

Americans although one of them has a kiwi father so has citizenship.

 
Ive been reading a bit of foreign news just to get a taste of what they are saying. And doesnt seem the Germans are too impressed with Von Der Leyen. And blame her almost entirely for the whole fiasco.

Too bad then than the germans were forced to have failed second-rate german politician Leyen by Germany. Making the Eu look even dumber by having her as its nominal head.
In other words, if you think Leyen is her own person and not just following orders by Germany, you haven't been paying attention. At least Juncker, the previous person in this position, was voted by the actual european parliament, instead of this one who was appointed by decree.
 
And in fact it was you who took the position that the virus cannot be eradicated. How, should that prove true, can the pandemic not be declared over while the vaccine continues to be necessary, and becomes a very profitable business? Someday the pandemic must be declared over, even if the virus is not totally eradicated from the planet. Which even I acknowledge is impossible. The business plan here is obviously to profit handsomely then from a vital medical supply.

I took the position that it can't be eradicated without a vaccine. Or, if you wish to split hairs, that it won't be eradicated, or even reduced to tolerable levels in many countries without a vaccine. Covid is infectious enough that once it's widespread in an area removing it requires a level of lockdown/isolation that simply isn't being sustained long enough, either by governments or individuals. Even if it might be an abstract theoretical possibility, if it requires a level of compliance you know isn't going to happen, it's just not rational to expect that approach to work.

If it's spotted early enough for individual cases to be tracked and quarantined, then yes eradication possible on a local level. Some countries got their act together early enough to do this - but Europe and the US are far past the point of containment, and both political and public will for maintaining lockdown is already low. Here in the UK, despite having finally "closed the borders" to some extent, we still have thousands of people flying in and out of the country. The streets outside are still as busy as ever. Cases are decreasing, but we're still very much in easing the strain on the health system territory, not anywhere near getting rid of it entirely.

Even with a vaccine, then as you say, a total eradication on the lines of smallpox is probably unrealistic. We've seen enough instances of it jumping between species to give it animal reservoirs to lurk in. A more realistic outlook is it ends up in similar territory to flu, with some variants continuing to circulate at lower levels, but hopefully a shift to less lethal ones. Annual vaccines for more vulnerable groups, adjusted to whatever is the prevalent variant. I'd be surprised if the Oxford/AZ vaccine is the basis for those though. The mRNA vaccines are much simpler to adapt to deal with mutations, and have consistently shown higher efficacy. Oxford/AZ's selling points are getting the doses out quickly and cheaply, and as mRNA vaccine production becomes more established its advantages in those areas will decline. This is the reason I'm not too bothered by a notional "post-pandemic" modification of the agreement - after this initial rush to vaccinate everyone, I don't see Oxford/AZ remaining in high use.

The very hastily conducted clinical trials were basically conducted by staff of these companies. IF you search you'll find that the famous mistake that led to the discovery that a reduced first dose would improve outcomes was done by the staff of one of the two companies involved. The protocols for the trials were managed between the researchers and the regulators. Again: what dis AstraZeneca brought to the table? The lawyers to demand no liability clauses?

Yeah, it was a bold try for them to spin that mistake as a positive, but they sure screwed up both the trial and the announcement there. I remember I went through the numbers when it was first announced, and once allowing for the small number of cases the 95% confidence intervals for the two dose schemes were barely separated. Then it turned out the age profile on the reduced first dose group was significantly younger than the rest, so yeah - not scientifically meaningful. I remain unconvinced the change in dosage made any difference, and the vaccine effectiveness is probably nearer 70% than 90% regardless. I can see why they tried to present it that way, but it didn't do any good at all for confidence in the vaccine, or their competence in running the clinical trial.

As for what AZ is bringing to the table, I do think you are glossing over that they, and other major pharmaceutical companies, do still have major in-house research and production facilities - as noted in some of your own links. And while they can outsource some of the work, organizing everything to get from clinical trial to mass production on a global scale is not being handled by any individual one of these smaller companies. You may regard it as "middle-management" but I still see a lot of value in a company with experience of the whole process coordinating everything. Certainly I'd put more trust in their competence to do so than the UK government. The government does have some people - a few of them - that know about this area, but it has also demonstrated far too often that it regards listening to them as optional. I do not think we would have mass produced vaccine by this point if we had relied on the government to organize things down at that level.

I'm also happy to bury the hatch on insulting remarks, provided it's mutual! Yes I was angry: you claimed that what I know for a fact is happening, and tried to inform about, was impossible. It was wrong and misleading to anyone who read it.
As for Bill Gates' contributions to help maintain this wasteful and irrational (for the public interest) situation, that would indeed be more political and better argued about in some other thread. It is a very evil things to increase costs and reduce access to medications and these vaccines provide a demonstration of how the intermediaries can be done away with. Even if - wrongly - again they weren't. So I cannot help myself from mentioning that example of how the status quo gets maintained.

Fine by me. :) I remain unconvinced Bill Gates has increased the cost of the Oxford/AZ vaccine. It's the cheapest out there right now. Your approach really only seems to replace AZ hiring smaller companies with the UK government hiring the same companies, in which case this argument boils down to the government getting a better deal from them than AZ. With the UK government's track record, particularly the approach of throwing money at a political problem until it goes away, I'm not really buying that. Remember all the overpriced and unfit for use PPE and ventilators they managed to acquire back at the start of all this? I think it more likely the UK government would end up paying through the nose to get these companies to produce the Oxford vaccine rather than a licensed alternative with a higher profit margin.
 
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Not only has the EU United Brexiteers and Remainers. They have also United Sinn Fein and the DUP. That's a serious achievement right there. I don't think Ursula is going to be in her job much longer. If she keeps going I could see a vote of no confidence.
 
Video about qurantine to enter NZ.

Americans although one of them has a kiwi father so has citizenship.


I just recently spoke with a friend from NZ, and she says that if you fly to NZ, and stay <3 months (-> tourists), you need to pay your quarantine stay on your own (~4000€ she said), otherwise you get it paid back.
So not something to consider right now as holidays :lol:.



In my home district in Germany there's now an investigation going on against 2 doctors. There was a demonstration, and a suspiciously high amount of demonstrators had medical attestations for being excempt from wearing maskes, coming from these 2 doctors.
I'd say this is definitely not something you should risk your job for, and if they found it was misconduct, they'll probably rightfully lose their license (or get fined, or whatever).
 
ah yes , when will the hate against Bill Gates start or will it ever . Nobody has yet died of not having the current Windows ı should suggest , while Canada has enough contracts to vaccinate its entire population 5 times over ? Ostrich like ... Spanish flu and its strategic results is such a fine topic to discuss , except the 21st Century loves profits even more .
 
Iran vaccine Diffuses England strain

Hassan Jalili, who oversees local vaccine production at Setad, a powerful state organisation under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, said on Saturday that tests on the blood samples of volunteers who received two doses of COVIran Barekat have yielded promising results.
“Tests have shown that the blood plasma of the people who were injected with the vaccine in human trials is capable of completely defusing the mutated virus of the English corona[virus],” he said.
Minoo Mohraz, a senior member of the national coronavirus task force, also confirmed the news.
“The health ministry gave a sample of the English mutated virus that has a 70 percent higher infection rate to Setad researchers and tests on the blood plasma of the first three recipients of COVIran Barekat showed the virus was completely defused,” she said.
I just thought that it is funny how the reference to the "English corona" mirrors trumps use of the "china virus". Also the use of the word "defuse", but that might be translation, I guess they made the announcement in farsi.

Spoiler Also, what is going on with that photo :

No one is making off brand, no label vaccine with a total of 5 words on the label. Surely, with the occurrence of vaccine scams, it is the responsibility of the media to make the public aware of what actual vaccine labelling looks like. Some crim could print out labels that look like that and show their victims that page to "prove" it is genuine.
 
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this translated as silly talk means lran had early experience with other kinds of the Coronavirus at the times it looked like it would destroy the religious decision making class and they find the current release easy .
 
The actual position is the following: the test-data does not include a large enough sample-size in the age bracket above the age of 64 to make any definitive statement on whether the vaccine works well enough or not. And that is very much true.

From that point on there are two possible paths to take:
a) ignore that you don't have the necessary data, assume that it still works, and go ahead with using it
b) wait for further testing to deliver the necessary data, and until then use the vaccine only for younger people

And I would agree with that position. The problem is that it shows different standards about the same thing. The "Pfizer vaccine" was also hastily approved due to political pressures from (among others) these very same governments. Sample sizes were also small. Which raises the scientific question: how small is too small? Which as it turned out is a political question. It depends on how hasty one wants to be in that particular occasion.

I'm afraid we are really seeing a modification of the c) option mentioned in another post: suspect it doesn't work very well but use it anyway.
 
Fine by me. :) I remain unconvinced Bill Gates has increased the cost of the Oxford/AZ vaccine. It's the cheapest out there right now. Your approach really only seems to replace AZ hiring smaller companies with the UK government hiring the same companies, in which case this argument boils down to the government getting a better deal from them than AZ. With the UK government's track record, particularly the approach of throwing money at a political problem until it goes away, I'm not really buying that. Remember all the overpriced and unfit for use PPE and ventilators they managed to acquire back at the start of all this? I think it more likely the UK government would end up paying through the nose to get these companies to produce the Oxford vaccine rather than a licensed alternative with a higher profit margin.

It is not at all only about that. Oxford was ready to gift its vaccine licenses away, meaning any government could go to any of the dozens of companies around the world with the ability to produce vaccines and hire them to produce this. Or they could do it on their own labs/companies, which some have.

The hyperventiolating in the financial press about the EU threat to activate that article 122 clause was about the EU creating a precedent for overriding the sanctity of private licensing of "intellectual property". For what the EU was actually threatening AstraZeneca with was not invading the UK and taking over the third-party factories it had hired there. It was going to other companies and having them produce the "AstraZeneca" vaccine regardless of licenses. Which the European Commission really, really didn't want to create a precedent for because several big european corporations could be hit with that by other countries then. So they weren't explicit and auickly changed to instead in threatening the UK with withholding the vaccines exported by Pfeizer. And then dropped even that.

The licensing deal did reduce the supply of vaccine bt granting a monopoly to AstraZeneca, one that governments even in desperate situations refuse to break because business uber alles...
 
Here a story about Covid and a Lama called Cormac: a migrant in Washington State, who as a real (Irish) charioteer drives his nanobodies to cover the Covid spikes, making them harmless.

“He is an extremely charismatic llama … he’s a pretty cool guy,” says TJ Esparza, a neuroscientist at the Uniformed Services University. He is part of the team attempting to transform Cormac’s nanobody cells into a drug that will coat the inside of human lungs, providing temporary but effective protection from coronavirus particles.

Camelids such as camels, llamas and alpacas produce nanobodies, which are similar to human antibodies but much smaller. The right nanobodies, from the right animal, can essentially nestle over the spikes that dot the surface of a coronavirus particle and prevent them from latching on to healthy cells.

Cormac turned out to be the right llama. After he was injected with a harmless pseudovirus five times over the course of a month, a small portion of his blood was taken and his nanobodies isolated. Cormac produced one nanobody strain, from hundreds analysed, that was found to be effective in preventing infection.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...he-extremely-charismatic-llama-may-hold-a-key

We are for sure in a deep dip now because of Covid, but our knowledge and knowledge potential to deal with virusses is growing in turbo mode.
We will need that as well for the future with our ever increasing mobility and travel density.

Just as a late evening shot of anti-dote with all the culture pessimism and techno pessimism raging around (in the western cultures)
 
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I just recently spoke with a friend from NZ, and she says that if you fly to NZ, and stay <3 months (-> tourists), you need to pay your quarantine stay on your own (~4000€ she said), otherwise you get it paid back.
So not something to consider right now as holidays :lol:.



In my home district in Germany there's now an investigation going on against 2 doctors. There was a demonstration, and a suspiciously high amount of demonstrators had medical attestations for being excempt from wearing maskes, coming from these 2 doctors.
I'd say this is definitely not something you should risk your job for, and if they found it was misconduct, they'll probably rightfully lose their license (or get fined, or whatever).

Yeah and tourists are low priority for qurantine.

It's not impossible to come here but it's not easy or cheap.

Most people don't pay for qurantine it's mostly for trivial travel purposes. Eg if I wanted to go on holiday to Europe I may have to pay. If I was overseas when Covid landed no charge but booking a space in qurantine may be difficult.

There's a trickle of foreigners getting in still. Health professionals, high profile event types (sport, movies, tv productions) etc.
 
How generous are the quarantine spaces in NZ? The big problem for Australia at the moment is the severe limitation on the number of quarantine spaces available, leaving many Australians stuck overseas (including my sister, who has just had her February flight cancelled, and has been told that she can be re-booked onto a May flight). Flights come to Australia with only a couple dozen people, because airlines only have a tiny weekly allocation. Last month when there were a handful of cases in Sydney and Melbourne and people were panicking about the 'new UK strain', quarantine places were cut in half which created even more difficulties. There are still flights going back and forth, but quarantine creates a huge bottleneck, with airlines having a tiny weekly allocation meaning they can only fit a couple dozen people no a flight.
 
How generous are the quarantine spaces in NZ? The big problem for Australia at the moment is the severe limitation on the number of quarantine spaces available, leaving many Australians stuck overseas (including my sister, who has just had her February flight cancelled, and has been told that she can be re-booked onto a May flight). Flights come to Australia with only a couple dozen people, because airlines only have a tiny weekly allocation. Last month when there were a handful of cases in Sydney and Melbourne and people were panicking about the 'new UK strain', quarantine places were cut in half which created even more difficulties. There are still flights going back and forth, but quarantine creates a huge bottleneck, with airlines having a tiny weekly allocation meaning they can only fit a couple dozen people no a flight.

Idk exact numbers afaik.

Say if I was stuck in the UK I would have to book a qurantine spot. Apparatus it was hard to get one around Christmas.

Last I heard they can process around 3000 a week 90% are for NZers the other 10% foreigner's.
 
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Peru runs out of bottled oxygen for patients. FFS.
 
The agreement is for the duration of the pandemic (as defined by the WHO - and let's be clear that's not going to be declared over any time soon). And it is up to Oxford university as well as AZ what the post pandemic licensing agreement will be. If Covid vaccines are required beyond this pandemic I suspect the mRNA vaccines will be preferred in the long run, when rapid response is less of an issue.

In the meanwhile I took the time to see this contract the EU had agreed to keep secret but now disclosed. I can see why both sides had wanted it secret.

While the agreement between Oxford and AstraZeneca may be for the duration of the pandemic as called by the WHO, the contract signed by the EU commission with AstraZeneca is explicit in using a different date, and I shall quote because they tried (rather clumsily) to censor that bit but ended up leaking it:

9.3 AstraZeneca shall provide any agreed Additional Doses at Cost of Goods until 1 July 2021, unless AstraZeneca determines in good faith that the COVID-19 pandemic has not ceased as of 1 July 2021 ...

In italics the relevant bit: the EU Commission back then placed quite a bit of faith in AstraZeneca huh? How the times have changed! And that other party to the contract apparently didn't volunteer the WHO as arbitrator?
Not revealing this bit, I venture to guess, was in both sides' interest. AZ probably won't dare use it but why did the EU grant this?

Then article 11.1 grants all ownership of "intellectual property rights" to the manufacture of the vaccine to AstraZeneca, tying the EU's hands with only an extremely weak safeguard in 11.2 for should AZ fully abandon production of the vaccine. The censored bit in that section is the excuse framing for that, invoking "AstraZeneca's pre-existing obligations to its upstream licensor. And here we go back to Oxford's licensing of exclusive rights to AstraZeneca being the source of the artificial restriction on production of the vaccine in parallel in other sites.

Also I couldn't help being amused that the force majeure clause includes among its standard exculpatory conditions for breach of contract... epidemics!
Today's dose of humor for me came late and I have to thank the EU for it.


Edit: but it's sad really because in this the EU is a victim of its own inflexibly neoliberal framework. And by EU it's not be bureaucrats and politicians who built and maintain it but all the inhabitants of the countries imprisoned within.
It's up to national governments to break it and get going with dealing with emergencies. With or without the fig-leaf of Article 122 of the TFEU. But every corporate lobbyist in Brussels and every opinion writer for the big media will cry to high heaven if that article is invoked and sacrossant property or contractual rights are "violated".
 
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Max Lawson from oxfam is calling for all vaccines to have their intellectual property rights removed, comparing it to aids drugs. I cannot find a stable link, they are talking about it on al jazeera live. Oxfam's general argument is here, not covid specific.
 
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Idk exact numbers afaik.

Say if I was stuck in the UK I would have to book a qurantine spot. Apparatus it was hard to get one around Christmas.

Last I heard they can process around 3000 a week 90% are for NZers the other 10% foreigner's.

Yeah that's fairly generous in comparison. The cap in Australia is roughly 4000 at the moment; 650 in Queensland, for comparison.
 
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