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CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk


Mrs Whiggins

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9 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

This is fine, because Abbott will just tweet some more that healthcare providers should be vaccinating more people.

I would walk outside, find 30 people who have not been vaccinated that want to be, and administer the vaccination to them before it can no longer be used. We have no guidance, at all, on the federal level and apparently not much more at a state level either. Just allowing the vaccine to expire is incredulously silly, but here we are. 

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50 minutes ago, Wanker Bob said:

My wife's friend works in a medical facility and said other than her only the 2 doctors and one other lady are willing to get the shot. More than half the office staff refuses to get it. I wonder what the true demand for it is. 

Can medical people explain this phenomenon to me? Medical people saying no thanks? Chalking this up to some people are idiots, even highly educated ones?

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3 hours ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

I have no idea what any of this means but can't the Government take the "recipe" for this vaccine and give it to Johnson and Johnson, Merck, Roche, etc... and say produce the shit out of this and we will work with the military to get it distributed to every HEB, Walgreens, CVS in the country.  Hell they could go door to door and vaccinate whole neighborhoods if needed.  

Why stop at taking the recipe? Why not just federalize all the pharmacies in the country and make all the immunization certified pharmacists federal employees. We don't even have to pay them, just make them go door to door pumping shots.  

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1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

Why stop at taking the recipe? Why not just federalize all the pharmacies in the country and make all the immunization certified pharmacists federal employees. We don't even have to pay them, just make them go door to door pumping shots.  

Jeez, talk about a 

 

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1 hour ago, burntorangebongos said:
Does anybody have a wapo sub that can cut and paste? What a horrible thing to do. 
Spoiler

By 
Isaac Stanley-Becker and 
Andrea Salcedo
Dec. 31, 2020 at 6:00 p.m. CST
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A pharmacist accused of deliberately spoiling more than 500 doses of coronavirus vaccine at a hospital outside Milwaukee was arrested Thursday afternoon, local authorities said.

Police in Grafton, Wis., arrested the unnamed man on recommended charges of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, adulterating a prescription drug and criminal damage to property. He is being held in the county jail, according to a statement from the police department.

The alleged episode, at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wis., touched off anger nationwide as limited supplies of shots are rationed for high-risk individuals. The estimated value of the doses, which authorities said totaled as much as $11,000, pales in comparison to the protection they might have offered to health-care workers on the front lines of the intensifying pandemic.

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The alleged tampering will delay inoculation for hundreds of people, health officials said, in a state where 3,810 new cases were reported and 42 people died Thursday of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, according to a state dashboard.

The pharmacist was dismissed earlier this week by the health-care system, Aurora Health Care. And authorities said he admitted in writing that he had removed 57 vaccine vials “knowing that if not properly stored the vaccine would be ineffective.” Police said they were withholding the man’s name until he was formally advised of the charges pending against him.

Aurora Health officials had previously been silent on the person’s motives, but the details of his alleged behavior became more grim with each update. At first, the incident, in which 57 vaccine vials were discovered Saturday left outside a refrigerator, appeared to be an honest mistake. Each vial has enough for 10 vaccinations but can remain at room temperature for only 12 hours and, once thawed, cannot be refrozen.

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Hundreds of doses were discarded, but some were quickly administered, Aurora Health officials said.

On Wednesday, the health system announced its finding that the act was intentional. And on Thursday, Aurora Health leaders said the vials had been removed not once but twice, raising doubts about the effectiveness of the several dozen shots administered Saturday.

Addressing reporters Thursday, Jeff Bahr, the president of Aurora Health Care Medical Group, called the pharmacist a “bad actor.”

Police in Grafton, a village of about 12,000 that lies 20 miles north of Milwaukee, said their investigation was aided by the FBI and the Food and Drug Administration. Leonard Peace, an FBI spokesman in Milwaukee, would not comment on the FBI’s involvement but said of the episode, “We’re aware of it.” The FDA also was aware, said a spokeswoman, Stephanie Caccomo, who similarly declined to address the existence of an investigation. She directed questions to the hospital.

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Initiating an internal review earlier this week, hospital officials said they were initially “led to believe” the incident was caused by “inadvertent human error.” The vials of the Moderna vaccine, they thought, had simply been left out overnight Friday, and they rushed to administer doses they believed at the time were still usable. They used nearly 60 and discarded the rest, Bahr said.

As the review continued, he said, “we became increasingly suspicious of the behavior of the individual in question.”

The employee was suspended and on Wednesday “admitted to intentionally removing the vaccine from refrigeration,” Bahr said. The person, he added, also admitted to removing and returning the vaccine to refrigeration the previous night, Christmas Eve.

That acknowledgment, he said, made clear that the nearly five dozen people who received shots on Dec. 26 may not gain full protection. He said Aurora Health was working with Moderna and the FDA to “figure out a strategy” for ensuring these people are thoroughly inoculated against the virus. He also said each of those individuals had been contacted.

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Bahr said there was otherwise “no evidence that the vaccinations pose any harm to them other than being less effective or ineffective.”

He said he was “not able to make any judgments on motive at this time.”

Tara C. Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University and an authority on antipathy toward vaccines, said the incident will prompt medical providers to reassess who has access to the shots, even among their own employees.

“Hopefully, this is a one-off, but I’m sure places will now have to think about whether those handling the vaccines are trusted, in addition to making sure supplies are under camera surveillance,” she said.

Security has been paramount in state planning, officials say. When Wisconsin began receiving vaccine shipments in December, the health department did not disclose the eight regional hubs receiving the bulk of the materials.

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Julie Willems Van Dijk, the deputy secretary of Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services, said at a Dec. 14 news conference, “This is precious vaccine. We do not want to create any security risks.” She said the state had consulted with the Department of Homeland Security on the plans.

On Thursday, Wisconsin Health Secretary-designee Andrea Palm said her department has worked with Aurora Health officials as they “investigated the situation, reviewed their processes and implemented improvements.”

“It is disappointing that any covid-19 vaccine was wasted in Wisconsin,” she added in a statement to The Washington Post.

Inside the cold, complex world of getting a covid-19 vaccine into arms
After making a vaccine for the coronavirus, you have to get it to the masses. But that’s not so easy for a so-called cold chain vaccine, requiring exact temps. (The Washington Post)
Shots are slow to reach arms as Trump administration leaves final steps of mass vaccination to beleaguered states

The Wisconsin incident comes as states continue to grapple with a bumpy rollout of vaccine, which is being prioritized for health-care workers and residents and staffers at long-term-care facilities. So far, distribution has lagged far behind federal projections, as the Trump administration failed to make good its promise to deliver shots to 20 million people by the end of the year.

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As of Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 12.4 million doses of the vaccine had been distributed across the United States, but only 2.8 million of those had been administered. Trump administration officials have said these numbers lag behind the actual pace of vaccination, which they also vowed would accelerate starting next week.

The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, the first two regimens to gain U.S. regulatory approval for emergency use, are two-shot protocols with intricate logistical requirements. Moderna’s vaccine does not require subarctic temperatures, as does the Pfizer product, but it does need to be kept cold. It can be stored at freezer temperatures for six months, the company says, and kept at regular refrigerated conditions for 30 days. It can be maintained at room temperature for only 12 hours, though, and can’t be refrozen once thawed.

What you need to know about the first vaccines

Complex storage requirements are among the reasons state officials are imploring providers to administer vaccine quickly once it is received. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D), taking to Twitter last week to celebrate the start of shipments of Moderna’s vaccine, said it marked “another step forward in fighting this pandemic.”

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In its original statement Monday, Aurora Health said it had successfully vaccinated about 17,000 people over the previous 12 days. Its initial review, it said, had found that the 57 vials were simply left out overnight by the employee after “temporarily being removed to access other items.”

The system serves eastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois, and includes 15 hospitals and more than 150 clinics, according to its website. Bahr said the specific hospital where the incident occurred received no vaccine before Dec. 24.

The health system apologized, saying, “We are clearly disappointed and regret this happened.”

 

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Just now, Neonmoon
50 minutes ago, Wanker Bob said:

My wife's friend works in a medical facility and said other than her only the 2 doctors and one other lady are willing to get the shot. More than half the office staff refuses to get it. I wonder what the true demand for it is. 

Can medical people explain this phenomenon to me? Medical people saying no thanks? Chalking this up to some people are idiots, even highly educated ones?

Yep. And people wary of the quick approval process.

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3 hours ago, Ghost of LL said:

By the way, the hearing in Paxton's suit against the City of Austin is ongoing right now.

A couple observations:

1) The hearing is before Judge Amy Meachum, who ran for CJ of the Supreme Court this year.  She's obviously a Dem.

2) For some bizarre reason that I cannot imagine, the State wanted to proceed on an application for temporary injunction, rather than a temporary restraining order.  That's bizarre because a TI hearing takes a lot longer because it requires live witnesses.  The State wants a ruling by 5:00, so it's really strange that they would go that route.

It's also strange because it requires a record if you want to appeal.  The court reporter isn't going to have the record done for a while.  So that makes it impossible to take an appeal.  That means that Judge Meachum's ruling is going to be effectively final.

She just ruled in favor of The city of austin.

Most Travis county judges start off not wanting to make the hard decision. Then they get jaded after awhile and don’t have much of a problem with it. 

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7 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

She just ruled in favor of The city of austin.

Most Travis county judges start off not wanting to make the hard decision. Then they get jaded after awhile and don’t have much of a problem with it. 

Seems a lot of state court judges are reluctant to make big decisions, as in injunctions, or trial before the court.  I think they get lazy doing jury trials.

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23 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

I’m not gonna lie. The speed for the approval of this vax has me anxious.

The process was quick, but the data are what they are.  We have 30k+ exposed to each vax with a few months of follow-up.  There are drugs approved every year with far less exposure and follow-up. In many cases it can take 10+ years for the post marketing safety surveillance to shake out.  Roll with it.  If we fail, we are going to fail quick and fail big. Also, Robert E Lee could probably do better logistics around the distribution.   

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6 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Seems a lot of state court judges are reluctant to make big decisions, as in injunctions, or trial before the court.  I think they get lazy doing jury trials.

It’s not an easy job. They have to make relatively quick decision’s based on limited information or sometimes incomplete arguments where appellate judge get the benefit of months or years in most cases with a definitive written record.

I would never volunteer for that job. 

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5 hours ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

I have no idea what any of this means but can't the Government take the "recipe" for this vaccine and give it to Johnson and Johnson, Merck, Roche, etc... and say produce the shit out of this and we will work with the military to get it distributed to every HEB, Walgreens, CVS in the country.  Hell they could go door to door and vaccinate whole neighborhoods if needed.  

I think as a general proposition in biopharma, especially cutting edge biopharma, manufacturing is closely tied to development.  Meaning a party uninvolved in development can't just take a "recipe" from another party and start whipping it up.  There's a lot of know-how involved.

DPA could force transfer of that know-how, along with anything/everything else, but I'm not sure that actually represents any really increased efficiency.

And, as far as I can tell, we've already made more vaccine than we can currently inject.

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3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I think as a general proposition in biopharma, especially cutting edge biopharma, manufacturing is closely tied to development.  Meaning a party uninvolved in development can't just take a "recipe" from another party and start whipping it up.  There's a lot of know-how involved.

DPA could force transfer of that know-how, along with anything/everything else, but I'm not sure that actually represents any really increased efficiency.

And, as far as I can tell, we've already made more vaccine than we can currently inject.

Taking the "recipe" under DPA from a company like Pfizer that went full risk on is a terrible precedent to set. Moderna on the other hand was funded by taxpayers, so if there is untapped production capacity, we should lean on them with whatever leverage we can muster to max out.  Of course the very notion is hypothetical as nobody is actually demonstrating that we have untapped production capacity.  

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3 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Taking the "recipe" under DPA from a company like Pfizer that went full risk on is a terrible precedent to set. Moderna on the other hand was funded by taxpayers, so if there is untapped production capacity, we should lean on them with whatever leverage we can muster to max out.  Of course the very notion is hypothetical as nobody is actually demonstrating that we have untapped production capacity.  

I tend to agree, but I believe there are actual barriers to doing that.  I'll defer to you on that, though.

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6 hours ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

Couldn’t Trump have enacted the Defense Act in order to produce more vaccines by taking the “recipe’ away from Moderna or Pfizer and giving it to every pharmaceutical company with the orders to produce enough of this stuff so we can vaccinate all of America by the end of February?  I am legitimately asking this question as I really don’t know the answer but I would think that would get the US economy up and running much quicker which is good for everybody.  

At this point the rate limiting step is not manufacturing it’s last mile delivery

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1 hour ago, DDD Dad said:


I’m not gonna lie. The speed for the approval of this vax has me anxious. But I will get it as soon as it’s available to me.

Fuck it.

It is new technology but other than an allergic reaction to the nanolipid delivery vehicle or one of the inactive ingredients  I can’t think of a mechanism by which it could cause harm. mRNA is just a blueprint to make a protein. The target cells take up the lipid and the mRNA goes to the protein factory I the cytoplasm which cranks out copies of the spike protein that then get dumped out and find their way to antigen presenting cells, which then start producing antibodies. The mRNA never gets inside the cell nucleus, so there is no risk of it being incorporated into the host DNA (even if it could get into the nucleus it couldn’t incorporate without a whole lot of help — would be getting way into the weeds to explain)

 

My only concern is I don’t think these vaccines actually confer immunity to the virus. I think they prevent a vaccinated person from getting sick from the virus if/when they catch it. Fine for all of us who choose to get vaccinated, but I don’t think those who choose not to will necessarily benefit from herd immunity. Vaccinated people will be asymptomatic carriers and will be able to spread to the unvaccinated. 

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3 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

The mRNA never gets inside the cell nucleus, so there is no risk of it being incorporated into the host DNA (even if it could get into the nucleus it couldn’t incorporate without a whole lot of help — would be getting way into the weeds to explain)

 

Don't sleep on the theoretical potential for a retrovirus coinfection.

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1 hour ago, Sawbonz said:

At this point the rate limiting step is not manufacturing it’s last mile delivery

same as it ever was. 

The morass, where the rubber meets the road in the larger health care system, is Byzantine.

  • Perverse incentives everywhere. Incentives are out of whack - intentionally to promote "efficiency" (codeword for increased profits). 
  • Moonshot, but they forgot to put in a door or a window.  
  • Unreliable marketing.
  • Too many lawyers.
  • Beancounters, Inc. call the shots in medicine and we are still eating the seed corn for increased profit. Now at warp speed. 

Cheers to a better 2021 for human health - patients and providers. 

Spoiler

(Set up warm army hospital tents and supplement under command of a Covid Joint Task Force. Set up temporary injection stations in stadium parking lots. Use smart traffic flow technology to organize time in stadium parking lot.) That would be a great way for the United States to democrat the humanitarian capacity of our Armed Force in times of tragedy. And it would be nice if would attack these kind of things - boldly.  We need to plan for these contingencies in the military. Game out everything and put together detailed plan. Then you have to train for it. 

It's that last mile that's the bitch. Too much inertia to just stay put and watch the patient bleed out.) 

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4 hours ago, Anastasis said:

No one gives a fuck about cat AIDS.

scientists working for public health - care.

PLoS One. 2018; 13(11): e0207644. 

Published online 2018 Nov 30. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0207644

PMCID: PMC6267967

PMID: 30500849

Co-infection with feline retrovirus is related to changes in immunological parameters of cats with sporotrichosis

Sporotrichosis is a mycosis affecting humans and animals globally, caused by different members of the Sporothrix schenckii species complex, including S. brasiliensis, S. schenckii sensu stricto (s. str.), S. globosa, and S. luriei [1]. Zoonotic transmission generally occurs through bites or scratches from infected cats [2–3]. Increasing numbers of cases, including in immunocompromised humans, has led to increased interest in this emerging health problem [4–5].

Since 1998, an epidemic outbreak of sporotrichosis in Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, with increasing number of cases in humans, dogs and cats [6–7] has been characterized by a high rate of transmission from infected cats to humans [8]. The metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro is now a hyperendemic area for cat-associated sporotrichosis [9] that persists as a neglected zoonosis in this region [3].

Clinically, lesions of feline sporotrichosis are characterized by subcutaneous nodules which ulcerate and are frequently widely disseminated. The outcome of infection in cats ranges from subclinical disease, solitary lesions, to fatal disseminated disease [3, 10–11].

Human sporotrichosis is generally characterized by localized skin lesions or lymphocutaneous lesions, although disseminated disease does occur, frequently associated with conditions of immunosuppression, such as HIV co-infection [5,8]. Feline disseminated sporotrichosis is frequently described in apparently immunocompetent animals [3,10,12].

The most prevalent etiological agent and the primary pathogen of feline sporotrichosis in Brazil is S. brasiliensis [13]. Sporothrix brasiliensis has high virulence and is generally associated with disseminated cutaneous disease in humans. Patients infected with S. schenckii s. str. present with less severe sporotrichosis that can be highly localized [14]. It has been demonstrated that the genotype of Sporothrixfrom cats is identical to S. brasiliensis from human sources of the endemic area of Rio de Janeiro [13], therefore, the occurrence of cats with different clinical forms of sporotrichosis in this area suggests that other factors may be involved in the disease presentation of feline sporotrichosis.

Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) and Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) are associated with decreased counts of CD4+ T-cells in cats, which may lead to immunodeficiency and to the development of secondary infections [15–19]. The diagnosis of FIV infection in cats is frequently based on the ELISA detection of antibodies against viral proteins such as p24 followed by Western-blot confirmation of inconclusive results [17].

FeLV infection is most commonly identified through ELISA detection of p27 antigen, a marker of infection [20,21]. The development of quantitative real time PCR for the detection of FeLV provirus is crucial for the recognition of FeLV exposure. FeLV provirus-positive/antigen-negative cats may be either at a very early stage of FeLV infection, when antigen is not yet detectable but provirus is, or they may have developed a protective immunity against FeLV and undergone regressive FeLV infection [22]. Cats that are antigen and provirus positive at the time of investigation are generally viremic and may subsequently undergo either regressive or progressive infection. The latter is characterized by persistent antigenemia. Only by repeated determination of antigenemia can progressive and regressive infection outcomes be distinguished [23].

Severe forms of sporotrichosis in cats has not so far been associated with retrovirus co-infection [10–12,24]. However, in previous studies, the cats with sporotrichosis tested for retrovirus co-infection were mainly from Rio de Janeiro, where available resources do not allow confirmation of infection by Western blot or PCR. Assessment of the immune status, as characterized by cytokine expression profiles, has also not been performed in previous cohorts of feline sporotrichosis. The aim of this study was to assess whether the co-infection with FIV or FeLV is related to changes in immunological parameters among cats with sporotrichosis.

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Grr, one of my friends who does the Facebook and runs a business has a client who is also on Facebook. Friend calls me and is steamed because the client had been shitposting since March/April about the virus to the point that my friend was ready to take the loss of business. Anyway, this client had been preaching about keeping things open, herd immunity, and long links to a Dr. Frank (?) Fred(?) or some quacko about the virus. Guess who already jumped the line and got a vaccine? Yep. Had a relative who worked for a local hospital and got one even though she wouldn't have otherwise qualified. I guess I should be thankful she's not an anti-vaxxer, and also that if she goes out now, she won't spread it, but at the smallest part of me, the part that I'm ashamed of--I'm annoyed. She may not have spread it since she never got the virus, but the disinfo and crap that went out over social media was part of the problem, but she never wanted to get sick herself (I mean, who does but encouraging others? Geez).

I'm glad I don't have facebook since I'm spared a lot of that, but I would be pissing people off right and left.

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