The state of the vaccines

Point taken but can you imagine the potential global blowback had the Chinese fielded an effective vaccine BEFORE anyone else? I won't argue about the origins because I have no clue but all the early press had the epicenter in Wuhan and had the CCP popped up with a vaccine, especially if it was much quicker than other versions I can only imagine the CTs about biowarfare attack and so on. If I may pick your brain and save myself some research, please, has the overall mortality rate significantly increased with the new strains?

 

If J&J applies for EUA by late this week or early next week, 3 weeks later the vaccine would be available to the American public.

What you are saying is valid but do realize that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are ALSO very protective against severe Covid-19 that would put you in a hospital and/or kill you.

My advice is, get fast whatever vaccine is available to you first. Don't postpone in the hope of picking and choosing. All vaccines have shown very significant protection against severe illness, but all need 4 to 6 weeks to reach maximum benefit so the sooner you get one of them, the better.

 

GSK and CureVac (a German biotech company) have announced a partnership to develop a booster vaccine that would tackle all variants at once, and might be available in 2022.

https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/media/pre...velop-next-generation-mrna-covid-19-vaccines/

 

That is excellent news.... It is good to know that they're working to accommodate the mutations before they overwhelm all of us like "the" virus did last year!

 

Also, new research by Oxford University shows that the Oxford/AstraZeneca first dose already cuts transmission to others by 67%, meaning that even if the vaccinated person still catches the virus (given that no vaccine is 100% effective to avoid infection) the person will still be much less likely to pass the virus on to others. And that goes up to 82% after the second shot; this is important to decrease the progression of the pandemic.

This is the first study regarding how vaccinated people pass on the virus to others if they still catch it. People shouldn't confound these figures with the vaccine effectiveness figures. The latter refer to whether or not a vaccinated person can still catch the virus.

So now we do know that transmission is also dampened by the vaccine, which is good news. Given that most of the vaccines address the S protein and are similar in this regard (with the exception of the whole inactivated virus vaccines developed in China), it seems like the Oxford findings are likely to be valid for the other vaccines as well, which share the platform of simulated viral genetic material to train a human cell in making the S protein (the two mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, the RNA virus vector vaccines from Oxford/AstraZeneca and Gamaleya Sputinik-V, and the DNA virus vector vaccine from Janssen a.k.a. Johnson and Johnson). I'd be less sure about the Novavax protein sub-unit vaccine in terms of whether or not the findings for the Oxford one transfer well to it, as the platform is a bit different (which is not to say that this vaccine is any worse; just different) and much less sure about the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines in this regard. The latter would likely need to do their own studies to verify that they also share this property.

 

Oxford University is planning to have an updated version of their vaccine targeting the new UK variant, ready for studies in the fall. Still several months away...

 

Thanks again, CenterField -- and not for the first time, either! We can always count on you.

Suggestion: Truth? You should probably apply for Dr. Fauci's 'spokesman' job?. Your observations have been more consistently accurate than his highly-generalized, often-contradictory statements.

 

Haha, that's because Dr. Fauci is a politician and I'm not!

 

Seems like the AstraZeneca is fairly lousy agaisnt the South African variant:

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/m/9d0...6a007f4aee9/oxford-astrazeneca-jab-fails.html

Behing a pay wall and just a lay press report. Seems like the actual study will be published tomorrow so I don't know. But obviously the South African variant by now has been more resistant to several vaccines, which is not good.

 

A bit of old news but I forgot to report it here: Janssen (Johnson and Johnson) filed their EUA application this past Thursday 2/4/21. The FDA's advisory committee will meet on 2/26/2021 to consider it. The timeline being the same as for the first two approved vaccines, by March 2nd the vaccine will likely be available to the public.

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Very important: don't pass on it if you're offered it. Don't get impressed by the 72% effectiveness in preventing moderate and severe disease which is apparently lower than Pfizer's and Moderna's. Two things must be taken into account:

This vaccine was also tested in South Africa against the more resistant strain B.1.351 while the Pfizer and Moderna were not tested against this strain, in their phase 3 trials.

So maybe if we had included South Africa in Moderna's and Pfizer's phase 3 trials, their efficacy would have dropped too.

What is much more important is that no person vaccinated with the Janssen shot got hospitalized or died. Isn't it what really counts?

So, whatever vaccine you're offered first, take it. Don't try to pick and choose. The Janssen vaccine is fine.

 

Is there a way to test for these allergies that I'm reading about that could get you into septic shock? Because I think getting tested for those allergies is probably the safest way for a person to go about it. Also, as far as you know are there vaccines without these ingredients that could cause allergic reactions? Just curious is all(and gives you an opportunity to elaborate more.)

 

It's not septic shock. It's anaphylaxis. Septic shock would be the multiple organ failure due to massive circulation of bacteria.

No, there aren't less allergenic versions of these vaccines yet. They will probably be part of a second generation rollout in the future.

But these anaphylactic reactions are very rare. 2 to 3 cases per 1 million doses for the Moderna and 11 cases per 1 million for the Pfizer. And they are very treatable: an epi pen shot will abort most of them. More severe cases can get an epinephrine drip. 100% of the people who had these reactions have recovered with no complications.

The thing is, people who have a history of severe allergy to injectable medications should only take the vaccine in a hospital clinic where equipment for respiratory assistance and medications are available to help in case of anaphylaxis. Otherwise these vaccines are extremely safe, the only issue in 130 million doses being the anaphylactic reactions. Do understand that any injectable medication or vaccine can cause anaphylaxis; it's the person's organism's fault, not exactly the vaccine's fault. They can make a version without PEG but then some people will have an allergy to whatever is included to replace PEG. You can't avoid allergies for 100% of the population; there will always be some degree of it.

The most likely culprit for the severe allergic reactions is PEG. There is a skin test for PEG allergy. If you are very concerned, you'd need to see an allergist to get the test. But I'd say, the rarity of these reactions is such that just having an epi pen available seems to be more than sufficient to prevent problems. Basically if one is about to have anaphylaxis to PEG, the skin test itself can cause it too (although there are dilutions to minimize the problem). So, going out of your way to test for this seems to be overkill if you don't have a severe allergy history. While you can't know with 100% certainty that even a person without a history of severe allergy won't develop one, most of the people who got the reaction do have this history, so the odds that it will happen to someone without this history are even smaller.

People get very emotional about vaccines, not realizing that the risk is not any worse than the risk for any given medication. Anything can cause anaphylaxis. So if the person were to avoid vaccines to prevent anaphylaxis, the person would have to refrain from taking any medication known to men. That would result in a curtailed life span.

So, the theoretical possibility that someone would have an allergic reaction to any medication typically doesn't stop people from taking medications when they need them; they'd simply, from that point on, note in their medical history that they are allergic to that medication.

But when it's a vaccine... OH MY GOD all hell breaks lose.

I'm not trying to offend YOU on this. I'm just saying how society reacts to vaccines, despite them being one of the safest and most worthy medications known to men, that save literally millions of lives every year.

 

There's a difference between general society and tin foil hat guys, so I'm going to give my best logical deduction on general society since I am NOT a tin foil hat. As a kid, I hated those prickly needles. And I hated them because of how much they hurt and I always knew it was a sharp object going to my body. I don't think we humans, ever truly get around that. I've grown a tolerance to it but if you think I like it lol.

So the pill(or drink) looks/feels safer, at least it's not a prickly needle thing going up your arm. I'm not necessarily saying that it is, I'm saying that's what it looks like to most normal people(to varying degrees, some more or some less.). I've never rejected any of my medicine before but maybe I'm confusing the allergies that cause sneezes(which I do have) to this bodily medicine reaction. Perhaps they're two totally different types of allergies.

 

Yes, upper respiratory tract allergies are to anaphylaxis, what a fender-bender is to a head-on collision at 100 miles per hour between a car and an 18-wheeler. Having these mild seasonal allergies is no reason to suppose that a person will have anaphylaxis to the Covid-19 vaccines. The recommendation for hospital vaccination clinic and epi pens nearby is for people with a known history of severe allergy to injectable medications, not for people with seasonal allergies to pollen, allergy to dust mites, food allergies, etc.

 

Oxford/AstraZeneca's vaccine was said by researchers today to have been 75% efficacious in South Africa before the emergence of the B.1.351 variant. Now, with the new variant, it dropped to 22%, which wasn't considered to be statistically significant as compared to the placebo shots (which is to say, maybe it doesn't protect at all against the new variant).

The South African government, in view of these results, has dropped the AstraZeneca vaccine from their vaccination program. They will continue with Pfizer. The problem is, Pfizer's vaccine hasn't been tested on the field against the new variant; it only had lab tests with cell cultures. I bet that the Pfizer won't achieve with the new variant, the 95% they have achieved with the previous variants.

 

We all got our second shot last week. A lot of them claimed to have a worse reaction this time. A sorer arm, more headaches body aches,, a couple of fevers. One of them was sent home the next day.

I have yet to talk to anyone that regrets either of those shots. . Everyone I have asked, would happily go for a third or fourth in six months to get this piece of mind for ourselves our families our co workers. These symptoms are nothing on the scale.

 

Seems like the AstraZeneca shot is not even 22% protective as initially reported, against the B.1.351. More like, not protective at all. 19 people got infected in the vaccine arm and 20 in the placebo arm.

 

They are saying that it will still prevent hospitalization and death from the SA strain but I haven't seen any evidence for this yet. The announcement was very confusing and the small study only involved young healthy people. Otherwise, if people only suffer with mild symptoms I would be happy to still take that vaccine especially as it's really the only one we in the UK have got at present

 

Yes, they didn't say anything about severe cases because these young and healthy people weren't likely to get severe cases anyway. But it doesn't bode well if the vaccine is pretty much useless for all other cases. It raises the issue that it won't prevent the severe cases either. We'll see.

 

In this afternoon's press conference the medical advisor was saying that the South African variant appears to be less transmissible than the UK one so that is likely to remain the dominant strain. He also claimed the Astra Zeneca vaccine was preventing serious illness with the SA strain but he didn't say what he was basing this on.

 

Yes, but these people are politicians...

The issue with vaccine resistance is the E484K mutation. The "Kent" strain a.k.a. B.1.1.7 is supposed to not have it... but then, 11 cases were identified in the UK of the B.1.1.7 acquiring the E484K mutation too.

So, politicians want to show rosy stuff... but we scientists remain concerned. The jury is still out.

Now, where is this guy getting this protection against severe illness? Likely from the fact that the Novavax and Janssen vaccines, although showing much lower efficacy against the South African B.1.351, still prevented everybody who got their vaccines from dying.

But see, they were effective at respectively 49% and 57% against the SA variant... while the Oxford/AstraZeneca was NOT... didn't even separate from placebo... so I'm not sure they can extrapolate the data like this.

Better proof, there where the situation is indeed critical, in South Africa, the government paused the Oxford/AstraZeneca from their vaccination program, and are trying to substitute with the Pfizer, and the Janssen as soon as they approve the latter.

You know, the Oxford/AstraZeneca is British... there may be a matter of national pride involved. But some countries are not that eager to approve it. Its efficacy has been controversial, with messy data. We haven't approved it. Switzerland has refused to approve it. I'm not that sure, right now, if this vaccine isn't indeed significantly inferior to others.

Just recently I was advocating for the FDA to go ahead and approve it. Now, I'm not so sure.

 

One bright point is that the vaccine roll out seems to be going well. Should have 50% of the population which is everyone over 50 with their first jab by May. Over 12 million doses so far which is approaching 20% of the population. Mum gets her 2nd Pfizer jab next month.

 

The Pfizer company published a study in Nature, yesterday, indicating that they tried the serum of 20 vaccinated people against a synthetic virus with the two main mutations that the South African variant has, and the serum did neutralize the virus, in full force for 14 out of 20, and at 50% for the other 6. So this is good news but it isn't the real thing yet. It's a lab study. The wild form of the South African variant has many other mutations, so, well see.

 

Real life experience with the Pfizer vaccine in Israel, a country that now has 80% of the virus being the B.1.1.7 strain, showed efficacy of 90% to 95% 7 days after the second shot, and brace for it, 100% 22 days after the second shot! Still, we don't know how the vaccine would have behaved agaisnt the South African variant B.1.351 and the Brazilian P.1, but it is good to know that nobody got even infected 3 weeks after the second shot.

 

Center Field do you have a link for about this study.

Thanks