The state of the vaccines

The UK vaccination programme.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639

This totals 52, 350, 000
But the UK population is 66, 650, 000
I'm in that 'By autumn' (fall) with approximately 21, 000, 000 other people, but if somehow I'm not offered a vaccine, I will never forgive society.
Maybe, just maybe, there's around 14, 000, 000 people under the age of 18?
IDK, I repeat 'but if somehow I'm not offered a vaccine, I will never forgive society.'

Although, this is news from November 2020, and could very well be out of date.

 

Judging by yesterday's news we'll have excess of vaccines left over. 3% of Whites, around 25% of Asians and around a massive 40% of Blacks have refused the vaccine when offered. Several Vax centres had to close early yesterday because people did not turn up for their booked appointment meaning they have unused doses

 

100% of stupid people have refused the vaccine.

 

If Trump was president the libs and the fake media would be bashing these vaccines and excessively reporting side effects and adverse reactions.

Amazing how stupid our country has become.

 

Here you go. Look at the interesting graph down the page showing no infections after day 22.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...israels-race-to-defeat-pandemic-idUSKBN2AA0MS

This article is also interesting:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/world/middleeast/israels-vaccine-data.html

 

Thank you Center Field, very interesting stuff.

 

Great news, Pfizer vaccine more robust than expected against new variants including the South African one:

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-226857/v1

 

That's a really complicated read! I'm going to have to read it again later

 

Curevac started the rolling EMA EUA.

 

Excellent. Mrs. Hays and I are on Team Pfizer. Second shot 20 February.

 

Team Biden has published an op-ed that is quite on target, making the case for people accepting any Covid-19 vaccine they are offered, without holding back in the hope of getting a "better" one:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/whatever-covid-vaccine-them-stop-081506022.html

I like the fact that Team Biden is publishing this transparent, factual piece. Like I was saying to @557 in another thread, we need to give them a fair shake.

 

Good. Mrs. CenterField (or I should say Dr. Mrs. CenterField) and I are also on Team Pfizer. Today we have completed 22 days from the second dose, which is the point when, in an Israeli study I linked to in some other post of mine, new infections among vaccinated people drop to zero.

 

The bottom line is that T-cell response to the new variants of concern among people vaccinated with the Pfizer shot is preserved and robust, especially after the second dose. While neutralizing antibodies do drop, the overall immunity seems to hold and be actually more robust than expected from the studies that only looked at antibody titers.

The bottom line of the bottom line: If you take your two Pfizer shots you won't die if you catch one of the two new SARS-CoV-2 variants, B.1.1.7 (UK "Kent" variant) or the B.1.351 (South African variant).

This study doesn't address the P.1 (Brazilian "Manaus" variant) and doesn't address the brand new UK Bristol variant that has just emerged. We know little about the latter.

But it is likely that these won't behave much differently from the South African variant because they share similar mutations.

What is not excluded is that the virus, which indeed and for sure will continue to mutate, won't eventually totally evade the vaccines, but so far, it hasn't happened.

Remember, all 7 vaccines that have finished phase 3 trials have prevented hospitalizations and deaths in all cases, including in South Africa. Those are: Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen, AstraZeneca, Novavax, Sputinik-V, and CoronaVac. Curevac is the next one coming up. The world will soon have 8 vaccines that fully prevent hospitalizations and death, regardless of their variable efficacy for mild or moderate infection.

 

So 14 March is our "get out of jail free" date.

 

I am a Kraut so I am on Team bioNtech,
My get out of Jail is March 22nd, 3 weeks after my second shot.

 

Team natural antibodies since July. I donate plasma and am retested for antibodies every month.

 

I agree with the theme of the article. Especially the part about getting active infections down so mutation events happen less frequently.

I will still give them a fair shake, but there is an error in reporting. The CDC reports one hospitalization I know of in the vaccinated group of Moderna trials.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/recs/grade/covid-19-moderna-vaccine.html

I don’t know if there are more hospitalizations than this one, I haven’t looked. I just remembered this one and looked it up. I wish Ezekiel had.

Again, to be clear, the article is on point and encouraging in that the advice is sensible and based on evidence.

 

Choose Sputnik v
but, we don't get to choose
do we?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russias-sputnik-coronavirus-vaccine-shot-073002717.html

Russia's Sputnik coronavirus vaccine is
a shot in the arm for the Kremlin​

The Sputnik V, which was last week revealed to be 92 per cent effective by the latest trial data, was named after the satellite that Moscow sent into orbit in a world-first in 1957. . .

easy-to-transport jab is drawing envious glances from around the world, winning new friends in poorer countries and breaking ice with geopolitical rivals. . . .

Saddled with growing anger over a slow rollout in the home country of the Pfizer jab, German authorities have offered support and possible production sites for Sputnik V.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor who was one of President Putin’s staunchest critics over the poisoning of Mr Navalny who was convalescing in a Berlin hospital, has reached out to the Russian president to talk about possible cooperation, saying that “every vaccine is welcome” in the EU.

Please no Russia hating or otherwise puerile replies​

Moi
Johnson & Johnson one shot system expected soon

​

 

Do get vaccinated if you can. It seems like the vaccine-induced antibodies are actually more robust than the ones acquired from the natural infection, especially against the new variants.

 

Good catch. Well, at least, one knows that the hospitalized person did recover since there were no deaths associated with the vaccinated arm of the Moderna trials, that I know of.

As for "nobody died" it may actually be disputable too. There was the one case of the physician who died of thrombocytopenia and hemorrhagic stroke following the Pfizer vaccine, I think. Subsequently 35 other non-fatal thrombocytopenia cases were found. Last I checked there was no confirmation that his death was caused by the vaccine given that thrombocytopenia has a number of other causes and does have a regular incidence in the general population, but I also saw hematologists who looked into this case and found it to be suggestive of a causal relationship rather than a coincidental correlation.

I've mentioned this death in my posts (hey, I'm being honest here, not hiding stuff to increase people's willingness to accept the vaccine). But even if this death was indeed caused by the vaccine, we are as of now at 175,232,000 doses administered worldwide, so 1 death in 175 million people is a phenomenally good safety record.

I guess they meant nobody died of Covid-19. But the fact that this vaccinated doctor died of something that may have been caused by the vaccine is no consolation for his wife and kids.

 

Yep. One more life possibly saved. I don’t know of any deaths.

Interesting. I remember the case when it happened but hadn’t heard the hematologist’s findings.

Absolutely. Risk/reward. It’s all about risk/reward and Covid is certainly the greater risk.

I haven’t read all the trial data from different companies but what I’ve looked at showed “all cause” deaths either pretty evenly split between vaccinated and placebo or some even with less “all cause” deaths in the vaccinated arm.

Perhaps we will learn something from this case of thrombocytopenia that will lead to saving someone else’s life. That may be some small consolation. It’s still sad. This pandemic has sure taught us lessons about our fragile existence and how we need to make best use of our limited time here.

 

I'm going to wait until I no longer have antibodies to see if there are any long term ill effects of the vaccine. Specifically auto immune diseases.

 

The French government have proposed that those who have recovered should get one dose when they can and get a booster 6 months later, so effectively forgoing the second dose. Not sure if they are saying that just because the number of doses is in short supply

 

That's not entirely unwise. While I don't think we'll see any auto-immune diseases with the vaccines (these mRNA vaccines re very specific and cleanly targeted to the virus' S protein), since you got antibodies aleady, you can afford to wait for even more safety data than we have now.

 

No, I think they are saying that out of evidence. There was a study somewhere; I saw it but didn't retain it, saying that antibody titers are very high when a previously Covid-19 positive person gets one and only one shot of a vaccine. It's like that vaccine dose is the booster, is the equivalent of a second dose, because the person's immune system has already been primed by the natural infection. Makse sense. Why wast a second dose of a vaccine for someone who already has B memory cells and high titers of neutralizing antibodies?

But I do think the previoulsy-infected person should get at least one dose.

It would be fair, though, to delay that person's vaccination given the urgency in vaccinating more susceptible groups.

At one point I posted an opinion contrary to someone who said previously infected persons should be excluded from the vaccines. I said, the rollout is already complicated and full of rules; introducing this other hurdle of obtaining antibody tests to see if someone had the virus before or not, would just delay things. Not to forget, some of these vaccines are showing more robust immunogenicity than the natural infection, especially against the new variants. For example, people with the previous variant are getting re-infected with the new variants, but there is evidence that some vaccines (notably the Pfzier/BioNTech one) are still protective against the new variants, and more protective than the natural infection.

The bottom line is, it still makes sense to vacinnate people who have had the natural infection.