Coronavirus Goes Fourth

[Gorth]

17 hours ago, BruceVC said:

...but imagine what you would be going through without the important quarantine hotels...the virus would be spreading in a terrible way

Nah, the bushfires in West Australia are out of control, I'm sure no Covid virus is going to escape Perth

[Malcador]

As Volo's not here, I will ridicule the Canadian government for him

 

[Gfted1]

Weird nosedive in the last week of January.

[Malcador]

2 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

Weird nosedive in the last week of January.

If I recall Pfizer had to defer deliveries, as they're re-tooling. Moderna's cutting deliveries as well. Guess that's Canada's clout in the world on display   But the situation is supposed to improve by next month, so hopefully we'll be sorted by the fall.

Cases are decreasing in Ontario, finally, hospitalizations are as well (ICU not moving much though). 

[Gfted1]

Yeah it seemed like it had to be a supply problem.

My sister got her second dose the other day (she actually sent me a picture of her sitting in the chair with the needle in her shoulder ), and when I checked on her a few days later she said it was no big deal. Apparently theres some location in Miami where her and her circle of friends were easily able to acquire the vaccine.  

[rjshae]

New Israeli drug cured 29 of 30 moderate/serious COVID cases in days — hospital\

Quote

A new coronavirus treatment being developed at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center has successfully completed phase 1 trials and appears to have helped numerous moderate-to-serious cases of COVID-19 quickly recover from the disease, the hospital said Friday.

Pretty exciting news if it holds up.

[Zoraptor]

South Africa has paused the rollout of its AstraZeneca vaccines due to low effectiveness against mild/ moderate covid.

Most of the vaccines aren't as effective against mild covid, but have very good effectiveness at preventing severe cases, so it isn't necessarily as bad a finding as it looks.

[InsaneCommander]

4 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

South Africa has paused the rollout of its AstraZeneca vaccines due to low effectiveness against mild/ moderate covid.

Most of the vaccines aren't as effective against mild covid, but have very good effectiveness at preventing severe cases, so it isn't necessarily as bad a finding as it looks.

60%? Still better than Coronavac.

[Elerond]

 

13 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

South Africa has paused the rollout of its AstraZeneca vaccines due to low effectiveness against mild/ moderate covid.

Most of the vaccines aren't as effective against mild covid, but have very good effectiveness at preventing severe cases, so it isn't necessarily as bad a finding as it looks.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/08/oxford-covid-vaccine-10-effective-south-african-variant-study

"The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine offers as little as 10% protection against the Covid variant first seen in South Africa, researchers have suggested.

Scientists who conducted a small-scale trial of the vaccine’s efficacy said it showed very little protection against mild to moderate infection, though they expressed hope that – in theory – it would still offer significant protection against more serious infection."

10% is worrying low, even if it gives 50-80% protection against serious infection, as it will not help to bring over all infection rate down.

 

[Zoraptor]

The overall infection rate doesn't matter too much though. Said it before, but if sars-cov-2 were reduced to causing 'common cold' like symptoms as its cousins do then no one would be worrying about it overly; and a 50-80% reduction in severe cases means 50-80% less hospitalisations and deaths which is the most important measure of its effect.

You'd still want to use a better vaccine if it were available though, and AZ's vaccine was already relatively low efficiency.

[Elerond]

More there are infections more there are possibility for new mutations which may cause more severe symptoms and which vaccines are less effective against.

[BruceVC]

18 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

South Africa has paused the rollout of its AstraZeneca vaccines due to low effectiveness against mild/ moderate covid.

Most of the vaccines aren't as effective against mild covid, but have very good effectiveness at preventing severe cases, so it isn't necessarily as bad a finding as it looks.

We need to question the SA study as it was done with a very low number of people, only 2000 and they had no data around severe Covid so more analysis is required 

[Zoraptor]

6 hours ago, Elerond said:

More there are infections more there are possibility for new mutations which may cause more severe symptoms and which vaccines are less effective against.

True, and that's why the better options would be better, but there would also be less selective pressure for those mutations- and typically the selective pressure is against more severe symptoms as the aim of the virus is to spread, and the best way to spread is for its host to be walking around coughing rather than dead. IIRC while the SA variant is more likely to spread it appears to be somewhat less dangerous on a per case basis as it does so.

[213374U]

Pretty sure that 2000 people would be enough if it was a randomized test. For 60M people, 2000 offers a 95% CI of about 2. So yeah, a pretty representative sample. That being said, I'm not familiar with thresholds normally used for drug testing.

[rjshae]

3 hours ago, 213374U said:

Pretty sure that 2000 people would be enough if it was a randomized test. For 60M people, 2000 offers a 95% CI of about 2. So yeah, a pretty representative sample. That being said, I'm not familiar with thresholds normally used for drug testing.

According to J&J:

• Phase 2 uses 1,000 subjects for safety testing.
• Phase 3 uses up to 60,000 subjects to judge efficacy.

https://www.jnj.com/innovation/the-5-stages-of-covid-19-vaccine-development-what-you-need-to-know-about-how-a-clinical-trial-works

[213374U]

The way I understand it, the huge trials were meant to accelerate results by increasing the amount of people exposed to the virus who had been vaccinated. This wouldn't necessarily mean substantially better quality (statistical power) results. Remember Fauci's remarks that the trials could be stopped early if results were good. That meant observing enough difference between the placebo and test groups to conclude that the vaccine was working -- positives would have accumulated quicker if more people were part of the study.

I'm no mathematician though.

[Darkpriest]

https://www.ft.com/content/71e53321-3719-4f10-9406-c614a5ddc1b8

[Boeroer]

On 2/9/2021 at 8:26 PM, Zoraptor said:

True, and that's why the better options would be better, but there would also be less selective pressure for those mutations- and typically the selective pressure is against more severe symptoms as the aim of the virus is to spread, and the best way to spread is for its host to be walking around coughing rather than dead. IIRC while the SA variant is more likely to spread it appears to be somewhat less dangerous on a per case basis as it does so.

Right. The Spanish Flu pandemic ended not only because of herd immunity but also because the virus mutated into a less harmful form (like a normal influenza).  

Edited February 10, 2021 by Boeroer

[Zoraptor]

Yeah, though we might not want too many similarities to Spanish Flu since its first major mutation caused most of its death toll, albeit indirectly.

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Right. The Spanish Flu pandemic ended not only because of herd immunity but also because the virus mutated into a less harmful form (like a normal influenza).  

I never knew that about the Spanish Flu, that is interesting news. Are you sure it became less infectious and or deadly ?

Some possible good news around these variations then

[Boeroer]

It's more likely that a less harmful but more infectious mutant will prevail - but there's no guarantee.

 

 

[BruceVC]

13 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

It's more likely that a less harmful but more infectious mutant will prevail - but there's no guarantee.

 

 

I hear you, we cannot guarantee anything definitive with the nature of a virus that can and does mutate

But if their is a chance it could be less harmful, like the Spanish Flu, then its still a positive thing overall 

[BruceVC]

https://www.9news.com.au/world/israel-vaccine-results-pfizer-vaccination-covid19-rollout-efficacy/3c613036-f60d-48c5-80e5-3e1bbc3d738c

This link is 9 days old but Israel has already vaccinated close to 70 % of their citizens, great efficiency and the country  coming together

Well done Israel 

[Boeroer]

Yes, swift and efficient. Like doing drive-through vaccination - which is brilliant imo. If you can sell burgers, enormous soft drinks & french fries to individuals at blinding speed by not letting them out of the car you should be able to inject a vaccine in the same way at least as quickly.

But they had some favourable conditions that can't be applied to other countries, too. 

But when I look at Germany's efforts... 

[Azdeus]

8 hours ago, Boeroer said:

But when I look at Germany's efforts... 

Now, I don't know where you're at, but we might actually be starting to vaccinate 65+ people in a few weeks. Some of them atleast, small scale, baby steps you know, just incase.