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Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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5 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

OF course aggy is gonna fuck this up for all of humanity. 

Scientists at Texas A&M University have identified a variant of the novel coronavirus that is potentially resistant to antibodies, the university announced in a statement.
The strain, BV-1, was found in one individual who had reported mild symptoms of COVID-19.

 

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/research-finds-new-coronavirus-variant-potentially-resistant-to-antibodies-665836

Remember these are the same guys who figured out cold fusion 🙄

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17 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

Minnesota’s sister state Wisconsin had a 2020 surge that didn’t get quite as bad in minny. In my unqualified opinion..we’re just playing catch up as WI isn’t exactly following our trek

You two fuck each other a lot for being sister states?  Not there's anything wrong with that.  Send pics of Lacrosse crossing over Winona.  

Sinners.

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23 hours ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

Osterholm has no idea if MNs current “surge” is plateauing.

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/is-minnesotas-latest-surge-plateauing-expert-says-no-idea?fbclid=IwAR2Uw5-03E9oSDQesX4W0QIY9SYrXbz5h5bSjpdiDuFM62GhSLCT-QFOVxg


Here’s an update on the hill he’s dying on
 

It's ok to admit a mistake or calculation & correct course. The guy is still a world class expert at the end of the day. I don't expect him or other scientists to get everything 100% correct. 

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On 4/22/2021 at 1:25 PM, lmao said:

It's ok to admit a mistake or calculation & correct course. The guy is still a world class expert at the end of the day. I don't expect him or other scientists to get everything 100% correct. 

The guy is spewing out panic porn. He did it during Ebola as well. He needs to stick to research and publishing peer reviewed papers. He needs to stay out of the news cycle. His track record for the last 6 months sucks.

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Yeah, the situation in India is absolutely fucked. The number of suffering and dying is absolutely heartbreaking alone. It's staggering, and their entire healthcare system system is reportedly on the verge of collapse. There is, of course, the entirely selfish nagging itch/worry that the number of times the virus is getting to replicate might lead to variants which could elude existing vaccines is out there. At the same time, the mRNA stuff is amazing, and I'll trust that the eggheads (for now) will be able to quickly come up with digitized concoctions that will be able to effectively respond with boosters.

sciencegiphy.gif

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Is the logistics of shipping over the refrigerated Pfizer and Moderna vaccines such that we can't do a mass drop to India? I kinda feel we've got an overabundance of supply here versus demand. Can't we ship J&J to them because it's better to get a blood clot than to let a country like India collapse?

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2 minutes ago, mdmost said:

Is the logistics of shipping over the refrigerated Pfizer and Moderna vaccines such that we can't do a mass drop to India? I kinda feel we've got an overabundance of supply here versus demand. Can't we ship J&J to them because it's better to get a blood clot than to let a country like India collapse?

One would think yet... 

 

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7 minutes ago, Captainant said:

It appears that was the only way that the drug manufacturers would agree to mass produce the vaccines so quickly.  They did not want to be liable to another country in the event something went wrong with the vaccine.  So be glad to be an US citizen and that you've been able to get this vaccine so quickly. 

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In the wake of such woebegone public health campaigns as the U.S. government’s 1976 mass vaccination against swine flu, which led to numerous cases of paralysis from Guillain-Barré syndrome, liability exposure has become the “third rail for these companies,” a senior Biden official acknowledged. “They are not going to do business unless they’re protected.” Paul Mango, a Trump administration Operation Warp Speed official, put it another way: “If I am a vaccine manufacturing CEO, I did not sign up to do this so that I would be liable to Ethiopia.”

 

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2 minutes ago, Hate said:

It appears that was the only way that the drug manufacturers would agree to mass produce the vaccines so quickly.  They did not want to be liable to another country in the event something went wrong with the vaccine.  So be glad to be an US citizen and that you've been able to get this vaccine so quickly. 

 

No doubt it benefitted us as citizens, just pointing out that bidens hands are tied in that regard and it wasn't that "joe biden hates brown people" as you put it. Good partisan shit post though bro

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So we're thinking the 3rd World is never gonna get up to a good vaccination rate and it's gonna dog them indefinitely?  And those countries are gonna be a breeding ground for hotter and hotter variants?

Yes on vaccinations, IMO. I don’t think the west is even going to get fully there. Best we can hope for is probably 65-70 percent uptake in this country. And that’s in the first round, not even considering follow up for boosters if that is deemed necessary. We’ll get enough for it to be manageable from a healthcare standpoint and society will move on. That’s kind of already happening. I think it’ll be several years before the entire world gets to that point, and that’s only if the west makes a concerted effort to help with funding and distribution.

I don’t pretend to know what’s going to happen as far as viral mutations. It’s very possible that the current vaccines will continue to be protective against severe disease for a while even if variants with more significant impact on baseline efficacy emerge. It’s possible our shit gets wrecked.
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So we're thinking the 3rd World is never gonna get up to a good vaccination rate and it's gonna dog them indefinitely?  And those countries are gonna be a breeding ground for hotter and hotter variants?

NGOs are going to have to go in there and take over once the developed world gets their shit together.
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1 hour ago, Captainant said:

No doubt it benefitted us as citizens, just pointing out that bidens hands are tied in that regard and it wasn't that "joe biden hates brown people" as you put it. Good partisan shit post though bro

That article appears to be referring to raw materials and components not the actual vaccines. 

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4 hours ago, Captainant said:

Speaking of a swing and a miss. His post was a fucking joke, and second, the vaccine mfrs pushed that. But never let a chance to blame Trump for something pass. 

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25 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

Speaking of a swing and a miss. His post was a fucking joke, and second, the vaccine mfrs pushed that. But never let a chance to blame Trump for something pass. 

Captaintaint has no sense of humor.  This is what I imagine him to be like in real life as long as the joke is directed at Trump.

good-morning-vietnam.gif&f=1&nofb=1

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-04-23/mixing-up-vaccine-in-a-kitchen-video-knugfpm9

For the millions of people around the world who don’t have access to hard-to-get Covid-19 vaccines, a group of Boston-area scientists has a potential solution. And it’s literally a solution, one that you snort in hopes of warding off the deadly virus.

The group is called the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative, or RaDVaC, and their vaccine is so easy to make that its chief scientist, Preston Estep, said we could whip it up in my kitchen. So we did.

What it does have is low-cost, low-tech production. Shots can be made for as little as a dime each and took less than an hour to mix together in my home -- less time than it would take to make a loaf of bread.

Spoiler

All the materials -- saline solution, small pieces of proteins that are similar to those of the coronavirus, and cross-linking chemicals including one called chitosan that’s made from shellfish and insect carapaces -- can be bought online with no special licenses or permission. And the recipe is open-source, meaning anyone can use it.

“We want other people to have the design,” Estep said. “So we share the design and start making the vaccine, and then we start testing it on ourselves.”

The Process

In both rich and poor countries, there’s still not enough Covid vaccine to go around. Jutta Paulus, a Green Party member of the European Parliament from Germany, said she’s spoken with European Union regulators, its health ministry and the World Health Organization about backing and testing RaDVac’s vaccine. Without success, the trained pharmacist is turning to non-governmental organizations and foundations.

“I would have taken this vaccine experimentally,” said Paulus, who hasn’t received any vaccine herself. “My personal belief is that the risk is low, and I wouldn’t expect a lot of adverse reactions, but it has to be investigated.”

A cheap, easily produced vaccine could be a hugely important when the next pandemic hits, Paulus said. And that’s when, not if, as people continue to come into contact with more new, potentially dangerous viruses spreading in the animal world.

Here’s how the vaccine is supposed to work: The vaccine is essentially an amalgam of portions of coronavirus proteins that the human immune system recognizes. RaDVaC takes those pieces, called peptides, and uses chitosan to pull them together into nanoparticles that are similar in size to viruses.

The nanoparticles have a positive charge, and when they’re snorted, they’re attracted to the negatively charged nasal lining. The scientists hope the particles will be recognized by the body’s immune system, which would then prime protective antibodies and T-cells to respond in the event of a real infection. Protecting nasal tissue is key, because that’s where the virus is thought to frequently enter the body. The idea has been shown to work in animal experiments, Estep said.

Because the vaccine is so simple to make, it’s also relatively easy to modify. RaDVaC is already on its 10th version, which includes copies of portions of the virus that aren’t included in commercial vaccines. Other components are designed to protect against new variants that emerged in the U.K., Brazil and South Africa. Big vaccine-makers are just beginning to test versions targeted against these mutants in people.

“We have the first vaccine that addresses those variants of concern,” Estep said. “Because we’re not constrained by all these clinical trials and regulatory hoops, we can start making these designs and testing them very quickly.”

A Visitor

Estep showed up at my door on a Wednesday afternoon in April toting nothing more than a cardboard box and a mini-cooler. Inside the box were a magnetic stirring plate, a beaker, pipetting equipment and a sterilizing agent. The cooler held the peptides and chitosan.

Dousing his gloved hands in isopropyl alcohol at every step of the way, Estep showed me how to slowly mix the peptides and chitosan to form nanoparticles, invisible to the naked eye. We let it sit for a few minutes, and then he sprayed the solution into his nose for what he said was the 10th time. Side effects are minimal, he said.

“It usually results in some nasal congestion, but that soon goes away,” he said.

The list of disclaimers on RaDVaC’s website is quite long. The group doesn’t guarantee that the vaccine works, and its efforts don’t constitute medical advice. It doesn’t provide ingredients or production equipment. I didn’t take the vaccine Estep made, as it may present legal problems for the group to directly provide vaccine to anyone.

But RaDVaC is continuing to bring its simple vaccine into the mainstream. Talks are underway with governments to get it into challenge trials, which would involve deliberately trying to infect vaccinated and unvaccinated volunteers with SARS-CoV-2. The studies carry some risk but are an efficient way to determine whether the solution works at minimal cost.

“We made it a priority from the very start that everything is free and open-source,” he said. “A lot of emerging economies are last on the list for vaccine access. They’re extremely concerned, they have no options right now. The thing that these governments are starting to realize is that if they had control of production, they wouldn’t have to negotiate these contracts, they wouldn’t have to be last in line -- they could just design it and make it.”

India looks to be FUBAR:

India has long been known as the “pharmacy of the world,” since India’s pharmaceutical industry sector has been skillful at reverse-engineering a range of generic drugs. It is the third-largest pharmaceutical industry manufacturer. India accounts for 60 percent of global vaccine production, including 90 percent of the WHO use of measles vaccine, and India has become the largest producer of pills for the U.S. market. But none of this helped during the crisis.

Vaccines for COVID-19 are not available for Indians at the pace necessary. Vaccinations for Indians will not be complete before November 2022. The government’s new policy will allow vaccine makers to hike up prices, but not produce fast enough to cover needs (India’s public sector vaccine factories are sitting idle). No large-scale rapid procurement is on the cards. Nor is there enough medical oxygen, and promises to build capacity have been unfulfilled by the ruling party. India’s government has been exporting oxygen, even when it became clear that domestic reserves were depleted (it has also exported precious Remdesivir injections).

On March 25, 2020, Modi said that he would win this Mahabharat—this epic battle—against COVID-19 in 18 days. Now, more than 56 weeks after that promise, India looks more like the blood-soaked fields of Kurukshetra, where thousands lay dead, with the war not even at halftime.

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9 hours ago, smoky said:

Has China's stats moved in the last 12 months?

We all know they're full of shit, but I'd figure they'd post a couple deaths here and there so that is wasn't blatantly obvious.

I believe they claim a few new cases per day and a death every few months. Remove the first few months of covid, and they’re the equivalent of a town of 100 people.

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9 hours ago, smoky said:

Has China's stats moved in the last 12 months?

We all know they're full of shit, but I'd figure they'd post a couple deaths here and there so that is wasn't blatantly obvious.

This is China's data reporting.....

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On 4/24/2021 at 2:48 PM, Johnny Sack said:

The message needs to be once you’re two weeks past your second shot, you can ditch your mask.  Act like you’re immune and don’t live life scared.  And incentivize people to put shots in their arm.  

Why do you think wearing a mask is living scared?

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agree the message needs to move to incentivizing people to get the shot.  There are several articles out there about people catching covid after the vax.  This is not shocking as i think best case the mRNA vaxs are 90% at preventing infection.  The initial numbers from the CDC on breakthrough cases seem pretty low (compared to the 90% expected efficacy) at the moment.  one thing these articles are also saying is that pretty much everyone agrees that the vaxs are ~100% effective of stopping hospitalization and death.  So again, another huge incentive, but vax hesitant people don't really care about probability of stopping death but likely would care about not wearing a mask to shop or travel.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/the-shock-and-reality-of-catching-covid-after-being-vaccinated

https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/20/no-myth-catching-covid-19-after-being-vaccinated/

so again, people can (literally) live with getting a mild case of covid after vaxxing.  no big deal in my mind and just a step in the process to 'getting back to normal'.  10-20% of vaxxed people will get sick, recover and move on again.  I think as more and more people get vaxxed and hit their 2 week milestone, there will start to be pressure put on retailers to stop mask mandates.  

What's happening in India and other parts of the world are reminders how fortunate the US is in vaxs delivered to citizens and how effective they are. This is scary.  almost 3K per day and you can bet that the number is vastly underreported right now.  

image.png.faaee6a296852533c1f501236d9cd9ff.png

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“It’s a complete massacre of data,” said Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who has been following India closely. “From all the modeling we’ve done, we believe the true number of deaths is two to five times what is being reported.”

At one of the large cremation grounds in Ahmedabad, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, bright orange fires light up the night sky, burning 24 hours a day, like an industrial plant that never shuts down. Suresh Bhai, a worker there, said he had never seen such a never-ending assembly line of death.

But he has not been writing down the cause of death as Covid-19 on the thin paper slips that he hands over to the mournful families, even though the number of dead is surging along with the virus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-coronavirus-deaths.html

Also, India was poised to export AstraZeneca's vaccine Covishield to other parts of the world, but now will likely put that on hold.  The AZ vax seems to have a good efficacy at 1 dose (~70%) so hopefully that will help.  only 8% of the population has 1 shot administered so far and < 2% fully vaxed.  compare to 42%/29% in the US.  

 

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17 minutes ago, gyroprotagonist said:

Also, India was poised to export AstraZeneca's vaccine Covishield to other parts of the world, but now will likely put that on hold.  The AZ vax seems to have a good efficacy at 1 dose (~70%) so hopefully that will help. 

Unfortunately that vaccine is ineffective against the known variants and that is what seems to be the biggest problem in India right now. I mean, something is better than nothing but they need something like the Pfizer or Moderna shots to stem the tide. 

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8 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

 


It’s pretty common. I know people who despite knowing the science just can’t bring themselves to go back out in public despite being two weeks past the 2nd shot.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/afraid-covid-19-after-vaccine_l_6065c15fc5b6555472cf9467

 

It is to be expected. You’re talking about people’s lives. I’m not going to lie, even after being fully vaccinated, it still felt a little weird going out and stuff. I’m rational and just trust the science but to think some people won’t still be scared is naive. 
 

hell, there is probably a zero percent chance I will get attacked by a shark but after watching 20 years of shark week, I’ve pretty much developed a phobia of swimming in the ocean. Thanks Discovery Channel. 

 

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2 minutes ago, The Dog said:

Unfortunately that vaccine is ineffective against the known variants and that is what seems to be the biggest problem in India right now. I mean, something is better than nothing but they need something like the Pfizer or Moderna shots to stem the tide. 

the only variant i have seen that AZ has not proven effective is the South African variant.  there is just too little data to make sweeping statements like "the vaccine is ineffective against known variants" .  AZ does very well against the UK variant (70% efficacy; linky).  With the very limited data it had vs the SA variant, it did not do well in preventing infection.  I don't think there is any data with AZ preventing hospitalization and death vs SA variant good or bad.

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Preliminary published data from South Africa at a time when the B.1.351 variant was circulating widely suggested AstraZeneca vaccine had no reduction in the rate of mild to moderate COVID-19 infection in mostly young and healthy persons. However the trial included only small numbers overall.

The ability of the AstraZeneca vaccine to limit severe disease and hospitalization against the South African variant could also not be determined in this study due to very low numbers of young people otherwise becoming severely ill. More data is needed to better answer this question.

https://theconversation.com/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-faq-why-do-the-age-recommendations-keep-changing-does-it-cause-vipit-blood-clots-is-it-effective-against-variants-158302

 

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Likely not the case but the last 2 or 3 days in India have seen growth in cases but not by the 10s of thousands but by only 5K or so. Hopefully it’s slowing down but what we see on charts is only a fraction. We see 350k new cases without a plateau in site...likelihood it’s probably 1,350,000 cases a day

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7 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

Likely not the case but the last 2 or 3 days in India have seen growth in cases but not by the 10s of thousands but by only 5K or so. Hopefully it’s slowing down but what we see on charts is only a fraction. We see 350k new cases without a plateau in site...likelihood it’s probably 1,350,000 cases a day

president of china asian GIF by South Park

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20 minutes ago, gyroprotagonist said:

the only variant i have seen that AZ has not proven effective is the South African variant.  there is just too little data to make sweeping statements like "the vaccine is ineffective against known variants" .  AZ does very well against the UK variant (70% efficacy; linky).  With the very limited data it had vs the SA variant, it did not do well in preventing infection.  I don't think there is any data with AZ preventing hospitalization and death vs SA variant good or bad.

Quote

Yeah it was an overstatement, but if it's the SA variant then they are fucked and need something else. 

But we both agree that any vaccine for them at this point is better than nothing.

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  • hayden_horn changed the title to Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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