It could be overkill, but seems reasonable to me. I’m still out and about often dealing with kid emergencies. I’m not going to be around my parents for a long time. Just no sense in taking risks for no reason at this point. I miss seeing them, but we have FaceTime and everything else for family. It’s not going to be forever.
Hey knowledgeable guys and gals, do you have any background information about this?
Apparently, there’s mounting speculation that lower infection and fatality rates in the former Communist Bloc countries in Europe are caused by the (still) mandatory BCG vaccine.
I somehow thought the first vaccine ever was the Jonas Salk Polio one.
I am not saying I am trumpeting it as a be all and end all, but there are some initial good data I heard about on Usatoday about Remdesivir. This has already been under development for several other viruses.
Asked my virologist friend.
‘Again, as with chloroquine, mostly anecdotal evidence to suggest it does anything‘
Me: could you venture a biological reason why it may work?
‘ It’s most likely low level cross reactivity or an immune boosting response to an adjuvant in the vaccine. My bet would be the latter’
Edit: Oxford microbio mate (you all wish you could be on this politics WhatsApp) said this in addition:
‘BCG is a miracle vaccine, has all kinds of beneficial effects outside of it’s main use, which ironically it isn’t particularly effective at.
So I don’t have too much trouble believing it‘
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Interesting. I think it’s confirming to an extent what we already “know.” Some people have/had the virus and it’s probably been scattering around places longer than we originally thought.
Really need some rapid testing to come through nationwide. Even if given the all clear sign I’m not going around big crowds until I have a good idea I’m not putting other people’s lives at risk, let alone my own. In a sense it would be easier if everyone who had it had some symptoms. When I know I have something and am shitting myself and throwing up I stay home.
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I skimmed the abstract when punnyguy linked it in the other thread, and added some very general thoughts, but I haven’t read all 17 pages of the study.
I think @ActivitiesGuy (if he’s not too swamped with work) would be better suited to giving thoughts on the statistics and general approach. It’s not really my area of expertise. I’ll read it and see if I can say anything useful.
I think he’s very smart lol. That sounds about exactly like what I would have guessed on a first impression.
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He’s incredibly bright, and also a hell’s angel sergeant. Interesting guy.
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This sounds more promising than another year or year and a half. I wonder what it might be like if/when this explodes in Brazil and a lot of Africa. If this gets around fast enough, the world might not be as badly turned on its ear.
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I’m assuming This is what you were talking about a while ago in the other thread.
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Yep!
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The Leading Candidates
More than 100 different programs are seeking to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. Here are some of the biggest and most promising efforts.
| Developer | Ticker | Vaccine Type | Status | Target | Manufacturing Goal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moderna | MRNA | mRNA | Phase 1 ongoing; Phase 2 beginning soon | Emergency authorization in the fall | A billion doses per year |
| Pfizer and BioNTech | PFE, BNTX | mRNA | Phase 1 ongoing | Emergency authorization in October | Hundreds of millions of doses in 2021 |
| Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline | SNY, GSK | Adjuvanted recombinant subunit | Phase 1 to start in second half of 2020 | Approval in mid-2021 | Up to 600 million doses by mid-2021 |
| Johnson & Johnson | JNJ | Non-replicating viral vector | Phase 1 to start by September | Emergency authorization in early 2021 | Hundreds of millions of doses by 2Q21, a billion by the end of 2021 |
| Oxford University and AstraZeneca | AZN | Non-replicating viral vector | Phase 1 ongoing | No date set | No goal set |
| Inovio Pharmaceuticals | INO | DNA plasmid | Phase 1 ongoing | No date set | A million doses in 2020 |
| Novavax | NVAX | Adjuvanted recombinant nanoparticle | Phase 1 beginning in days | Emergency authorization by the end of 2020 | 100 million doses in 2020, a billion doses in 2021 |
Source: Company reports
The Hares
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Relevant quotes:
Probably won’t be disputed: “There’s a socioeconomic gradient where poorer populations are facing COVID infections at higher rates,” Bhattacharya said.
Probably will be, since the implication seems to be that the general lockdowns didn’t really work: “It’s very clear,” Bhattacharya said, “that the epidemic is still in the early stages throughout the country.”
This article came up, and deals with Sweden’s more lax approach to Covid-19. They planned to let herd immunity increase naturally, and some say it isn’t as good of an idea as the Swedes initially planned.
The subject has come up on this board of herd immunity, I thought to post this here.
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@Aragorn She addresses the R rate:
She does not believe that the R rate is a useful tool in making decisions about government policies, as an R rate is “principally dependent on how many people are immune” and we don’t have that information.
I will have to look at it later. I skimmed the article but don’t want to search the video to find where she talks about the R rate.
My personal opinion is more in line with Ferguson’s, so although she’s certainly accomplished I don’t feel inclined to agree with her. Now, I am a biochemist rather than an epidemiologist so I classify as “adjacent” to the experts but not an expert. However, depending on what she means by “the R rate” I may or may not agree.
I do agree that governments have to weigh complex economic problems on the scale and contrary to how I think I am perceived in this forum I am not in favor of extremely long or draconian lockdown. However I AM in favor of having the tools needed to address the problems when we come out of lockdown fully to “normal” (whatever that is).
It seems that Dr. Tegnell, the new media darling of the right, messed up spectacularly… This is from one month ago:
“In major parts of Sweden, around Stockholm, we have reached a plateau (in new cases) and we’re already seeing the effect of herd immunity and in a few weeks’ time we’ll see even more of the effects of that. And in the rest of the country, the situation is stable,” Dr. Anders Tegnell, chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency, told CNBC on Tuesday.
I am just putting out here that there is a small sample size clinical trial starting, we can only be hopeful.
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