So I heard two things yesterday about Coronavirus, one unsure how to view it and the other with quite worrying implications.
The first was from a contact at Oxford University who claimed the labs there have worked out a vaccine for Coronavirus but that it will be year end before it is fully tested etc etc. I genuinely don't know if this is new news, expected etc. I haven't been following very development about what is happening.
The second, and slightly more scary, one was about a firm that produces a disinfectant solution that protects against coronavirus-type viruses. There are apparently limited facilities globally that can produce this solution (less than 20). The Chinese Govt promised to send over three 747s ASAP to bring back everything they could (the firm apparently can't produce that much so said no).
Sending over 3x747s to bring back that stuff doesn't sound like a Government which believes it has on top of the problem.
Conducting clinical trials, even during an outbreak, is necessarily time consuming. First you have to demonstrate safety (China probably have an advantage here, as they seem happy to play fast and loose with ethical restrictions we can’t ignore). But that doesn’t just mean the vaccine on its own is safe - you also have to be sure it’s immune effects won’t cause ADE on exposure to the live virus). Demonstrating effectiveness is going to be equally difficult, as you need a significant population exposed to the virus after they’ve been vaccinated - which exposure your health services are doing everything in their power to avoid...
For now, any such trial in the UK simply isn’t going to happen.
Pandemic trials can be different
Safety. And if you are clean then fuck it and let rip
Not quite following your argument Charles.
If there aren’t *any* safety concerns and you have evidence of efficacy there are protocols whereby you mass inoculate without a RCT. Effectively the human population is your control.
How do you know that there aren't any safety concerns until you've run trials and studied the interaction between the vaccine and subsequent infection ? The current virus seems to have some odd interactions with the immune system, so ADE is surely going to be a concern ?
Also, there are around 40 vaccine candidates. Which one do you choose before you've studied efficacy ?
Mass inoculation isn't something you do overnight, as you point out. Manufacturing bulk vaccine is an expensive and time consuming (and capacity constrained) process.
I dont know but looking into the future, surely there will be less flu spread as people are more aware of hand hygiene and how to avoid it. That should have an impact for years to come.
Well that's an optimistic view! Personally I'd like it if more people learned to wash their hands after using the toilet!!
But there may be some truth in it, that it is raising some awareness of hygiene (regarding fomites particularly).
On a similar habit-changing note, I'd be tempted to go on a corona-related anti-smoking drive if I was in power. If you catch this thing - and even vigilant hand-washing can't guarantee you will avoid it forever - you definitely want your lungs in the best possible shape, and even a couple of months off the cigarettes gives them a bit of recovery time. The UK's remaining smokers seem to be a fairly change-resistant bunch so an additional prod to kick the habit wouldn't go amiss - the NHS claims smoking leads to 78,000 deaths per year so still an important issue!
The numbers for February are just out (albeit they essentially predate the Covid-19 crisis), and confirm the national picture: Trump's popularity improved markedly in the month.
However... what's really interesting is where that popularity is improving. While most states just saw a single point or two either way, two toss-up states moved significantly his way:
Iowa: -9 to -5 Florida: -1 to +3
Overall, the picture continues to show a really close result, with Michigan and Wisconsin having Trump ten points underwater, but Pennsylvania (-1) and Florida (+3) looking pretty good for him. Arizona also flipped to a positive result for Trump for the first time for a while.
The big caveat on all of this is Covid-19. Morning Consult collects their numbers over the whole month. So there will have been minimal impact on these figures from it. If you look at the 538 numbers, you see that the Trump popularity bounce has dropped back fairly sharply in the last week. This may be a blip, and he ascends again. Or he may be seen as having messed up the response to the crisis, in which case things are going to go backwards.
So I heard two things yesterday about Coronavirus, one unsure how to view it and the other with quite worrying implications.
The first was from a contact at Oxford University who claimed the labs there have worked out a vaccine for Coronavirus but that it will be year end before it is fully tested etc etc. I genuinely don't know if this is new news, expected etc. I haven't been following very development about what is happening.
The second, and slightly more scary, one was about a firm that produces a disinfectant solution that protects against coronavirus-type viruses. There are apparently limited facilities globally that can produce this solution (less than 20). The Chinese Govt promised to send over three 747s ASAP to bring back everything they could (the firm apparently can't produce that much so said no).
Sending over 3x747s to bring back that stuff doesn't sound like a Government which believes it has on top of the problem.
Conducting clinical trials, even during an outbreak, is necessarily time consuming. First you have to demonstrate safety (China probably have an advantage here, as they seem happy to play fast and loose with ethical restrictions we can’t ignore). But that doesn’t just mean the vaccine on its own is safe - you also have to be sure it’s immune effects won’t cause ADE on exposure to the live virus). Demonstrating effectiveness is going to be equally difficult, as you need a significant population exposed to the virus after they’ve been vaccinated - which exposure your health services are doing everything in their power to avoid...
For now, any such trial in the UK simply isn’t going to happen.
Pandemic trials can be different
Safety. And if you are clean then fuck it and let rip
Not quite following your argument Charles.
If there aren’t *any* safety concerns and you have evidence of efficacy there are protocols whereby you mass inoculate without a RCT. Effectively the human population is your control.
How do you know that there aren't any safety concerns until you've run trials and studied the interaction between the vaccine and subsequent infection ? The current virus seems to have some odd interactions with the immune system, so ADE is surely going to be a concern ?
Also, there are around 40 vaccine candidates. Which one do you choose before you've studied efficacy ?
Mass inoculation isn't something you do overnight, as you point out. Manufacturing bulk vaccine is an expensive and time consuming (and capacity constrained) process.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
Flu vaccine is manufactured in eggs
It’s always a race against time to get sufficient quantities - it’s a slow process and one that is capacity constrained. Governments are also unwilling to pay for everyone to get it.
Indeed but presumably that means there is no significant herd immunity amongst working age adults?
Depends. You develop resistance against each strain as it comes through. There is an argument that some years the “flu is mild” not due to the virus itself but because it is a close cousin of a prior strain and hence there is some latent immunity
So I heard two things yesterday about Coronavirus, one unsure how to view it and the other with quite worrying implications.
The first was from a contact at Oxford University who claimed the labs there have worked out a vaccine for Coronavirus but that it will be year end before it is fully tested etc etc. I genuinely don't know if this is new news, expected etc. I haven't been following very development about what is happening.
The second, and slightly more scary, one was about a firm that produces a disinfectant solution that protects against coronavirus-type viruses. There are apparently limited facilities globally that can produce this solution (less than 20). The Chinese Govt promised to send over three 747s ASAP to bring back everything they could (the firm apparently can't produce that much so said no).
Sending over 3x747s to bring back that stuff doesn't sound like a Government which believes it has on top of the problem.
Conducting clinical trials, even during an outbreak, is necessarily time consuming. First you have to demonstrate safety (China probably have an advantage here, as they seem happy to play fast and loose with ethical restrictions we can’t ignore). But that doesn’t just mean the vaccine on its own is safe - you also have to be sure it’s immune effects won’t cause ADE on exposure to the live virus). Demonstrating effectiveness is going to be equally difficult, as you need a significant population exposed to the virus after they’ve been vaccinated - which exposure your health services are doing everything in their power to avoid...
For now, any such trial in the UK simply isn’t going to happen.
Pandemic trials can be different
Safety. And if you are clean then fuck it and let rip
Not quite following your argument Charles.
If there aren’t *any* safety concerns and you have evidence of efficacy there are protocols whereby you mass inoculate without a RCT. Effectively the human population is your control.
How do you know that there aren't any safety concerns until you've run trials and studied the interaction between the vaccine and subsequent infection ? The current virus seems to have some odd interactions with the immune system, so ADE is surely going to be a concern ?
Also, there are around 40 vaccine candidates. Which one do you choose before you've studied efficacy ?
Mass inoculation isn't something you do overnight, as you point out. Manufacturing bulk vaccine is an expensive and time consuming (and capacity constrained) process.
Safety trials are 10-20 patients in healthy volunteers. Vaccine trials can be 10s of thousands
So I heard two things yesterday about Coronavirus, one unsure how to view it and the other with quite worrying implications.
The first was from a contact at Oxford University who claimed the labs there have worked out a vaccine for Coronavirus but that it will be year end before it is fully tested etc etc. I genuinely don't know if this is new news, expected etc. I haven't been following very development about what is happening.
The second, and slightly more scary, one was about a firm that produces a disinfectant solution that protects against coronavirus-type viruses. There are apparently limited facilities globally that can produce this solution (less than 20). The Chinese Govt promised to send over three 747s ASAP to bring back everything they could (the firm apparently can't produce that much so said no).
Sending over 3x747s to bring back that stuff doesn't sound like a Government which believes it has on top of the problem.
Conducting clinical trials, even during an outbreak, is necessarily time consuming. First you have to demonstrate safety (China probably have an advantage here, as they seem happy to play fast and loose with ethical restrictions we can’t ignore). But that doesn’t just mean the vaccine on its own is safe - you also have to be sure it’s immune effects won’t cause ADE on exposure to the live virus). Demonstrating effectiveness is going to be equally difficult, as you need a significant population exposed to the virus after they’ve been vaccinated - which exposure your health services are doing everything in their power to avoid...
For now, any such trial in the UK simply isn’t going to happen.
Pandemic trials can be different
Safety. And if you are clean then fuck it and let rip
Not quite following your argument Charles.
If there aren’t *any* safety concerns and you have evidence of efficacy there are protocols whereby you mass inoculate without a RCT. Effectively the human population is your control.
How do you know that there aren't any safety concerns until you've run trials and studied the interaction between the vaccine and subsequent infection ? The current virus seems to have some odd interactions with the immune system, so ADE is surely going to be a concern ?
Also, there are around 40 vaccine candidates. Which one do you choose before you've studied efficacy ?
Mass inoculation isn't something you do overnight, as you point out. Manufacturing bulk vaccine is an expensive and time consuming (and capacity constrained) process.
Safety trials are 10-20 patients in healthy volunteers. Vaccine trials can be 10s of thousands
Comments
The current virus seems to have some odd interactions with the immune system, so ADE is surely going to be a concern ?
Also, there are around 40 vaccine candidates. Which one do you choose before you've studied efficacy ?
Mass inoculation isn't something you do overnight, as you point out. Manufacturing bulk vaccine is an expensive and time consuming (and capacity constrained) process.
But there may be some truth in it, that it is raising some awareness of hygiene (regarding fomites particularly).
On a similar habit-changing note, I'd be tempted to go on a corona-related anti-smoking drive if I was in power. If you catch this thing - and even vigilant hand-washing can't guarantee you will avoid it forever - you definitely want your lungs in the best possible shape, and even a couple of months off the cigarettes gives them a bit of recovery time. The UK's remaining smokers seem to be a fairly change-resistant bunch so an additional prod to kick the habit wouldn't go amiss - the NHS claims smoking leads to 78,000 deaths per year so still an important issue!
https://www.straitstimes.com/multimedia/graphics/2020/02/spore-virus-cases/index.html?shell
The numbers for February are just out (albeit they essentially predate the Covid-19 crisis), and confirm the national picture: Trump's popularity improved markedly in the month.
However... what's really interesting is where that popularity is improving. While most states just saw a single point or two either way, two toss-up states moved significantly his way:
Iowa: -9 to -5
Florida: -1 to +3
Overall, the picture continues to show a really close result, with Michigan and Wisconsin having Trump ten points underwater, but Pennsylvania (-1) and Florida (+3) looking pretty good for him. Arizona also flipped to a positive result for Trump for the first time for a while.
The big caveat on all of this is Covid-19. Morning Consult collects their numbers over the whole month. So there will have been minimal impact on these figures from it. If you look at the 538 numbers, you see that the Trump popularity bounce has dropped back fairly sharply in the last week. This may be a blip, and he ascends again. Or he may be seen as having messed up the response to the crisis, in which case things are going to go backwards.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-shadow-1976-swine-flu-vaccine-fiasco-180961994/
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