Does the coronavirus merit investment, or personal, concern or consideration?

What??? Something related to China isn’t transparent? {alt snark comment here} Claude Rains’ estate will be coming after me soon.

1 Like

yes mRNA tech could help w/ cancer etc. long term.

I wouldn’t trust anything from China beyond WM or $ store

2 Likes

Guidance instituted during a plague in the 16th century included lockdowns/quarantine, six-foot distances, disinfection, sanitary cordons, distance counters in shops.

2 Likes

I hope that they had more sense than to call it social distancing.

2 Likes

Replying here instead of the politics thread.

MRNA first, since that’s a lot easier to prove. This was back in early Sept. here’s their CEO was saying how they were going to slow down trial enrollment to make sure they had enough minorities. Because nothing is more important than minorities (to the left), especially in a country where they are, after all, just a minority of the population.

Moderna, one of the developers in the lead for a vaccine to prevent Covid-19, is slowing enrollment slightly in its large clinical trial to ensure it has sufficient representation of minorities most at risk for the disease, its chief executive said.

When the trial began, he had told CNBC in an interview that data could be available in October in “a really optimistic scenario; maybe November.”

Remember a really optimistic scenario would be one where the vaccine works very well and meets the earlier, weaker statistical tests at the interim reviews that have higher efficacy requirements (75-80% minimum, give or take) needed due to the smaller numbers of people. In the end, they would have 95% efficacy, so there’s a very good chance they could have meet that October optimistic scenario. Except at the start of October, they were still lamenting the lack of selfless minority volunteers and busy turning away lots of eager white volunteers for being the wrong color, so it was time for yet more delays…

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-moderna-ex/exclusive-moderna-vaccine-trial-contractors-fail-to-enroll-enough-minorities-prompting-slowdown-idUSKBN26R1SP

Private contractors hired by Moderna Inc to recruit volunteers for its coronavirus vaccine trial failed to enroll enough Black, Latino and Native American participants to determine how well the vaccine works in these populations, company executives and vaccine researchers told Reuters.

To make up for the shortfall, Moderna slowed enrollment of its late-stage trial and instructed research centers to focus on increasing participation among minority volunteers, the company said.

two of the commercial firms said they had received overwhelming trial participation interest from white volunteers. Several researchers said they struggled to overcome the entrenched barriers that traditionally limit minority enrollment.

It was not until late October that they would finally complete enrollment of their trial, and at that point, they predicted it would be about another month before they would have results. And sure enough, they would end up announcing their trial results on Nov 30th and not be approved by the FDA until Dec 18th.

So they took an extra 1-2 months to find enough of the right people to bribe into joining their trial, thereby slowing down the time they would need to reach two months of post-second-dose vaccination safety data and consequently eventual FDA approval.

How much sooner would that have been without all the racial handwringing and pandering? Let’s say it would have been one month faster, although maybe it would have been more. In December, 77,000 Americans died of covid. January may well be worse, TBD, but the point is that the sooner you start the vaccinations, the sooner you prevent that last, worst month from happening in the exponential spread of the virus. So their leftist sensibilities probably cost 100,000 deaths due to their delays. But hey, it was a really close election and good news too early, well, that would have costs more important than other peoples’ lives.

2 Likes

It’s not pandering to enroll all relevant groups in the trial. That’s the only way you see the response across all of them.

Yes, it’s a challenge to get blacks to trust and participate after our government has historically infected them intentionally with other diseases as guinea pigs. Especially hard to get elderly blacks to participate, as they were alive when that went on.

The trial duration doesn’t delay production, they were already full- steam ahead producing during the trials. That’s the whole point of Gates’, Dolly Parton, other philanthropists, and governments across the world (such as the US “warp speed” branding) funding ramp up and production of multiple vaccine candidates before the results are proven

1 Like

No, but it delays rollout because the FDA wanted a fixed amount of time, several months, of safety data on a very large number of people who had completed both shots. So the longer you took to get your trial enrolled, the longer before it would be considered by the FDA for their EUA. Yes, they had the vaccines ready, but the regulators wouldn’t sign off on using them, and that’s what the MRNA political choices delayed.

2 Likes

So what? The production totals to that point (a month or two) were insignificant. And a vaccine is useless without adequate data on effectiveness and safety.

The distribution logistics should have been worked out in the interim, instead of a last minute cluster-f scramble currently going on.

And the sooner you get your full trial going, the sooner you get those. Unless of course you decide that 7% black participation isn’t enough, so you have to delay the whole thing for a month while you beat the bushes and waive around a few grand to try to find the right demographics.

Sure, I get you want to have a broadly representative population, but you could have kept enrolling whoever you could find and get the main trial fully underway instead of turning away lots of volunteers for being the wrong color. Then you could have general results ready a month or two sooner, and maybe eventually you get the results for some smaller, less altruistic subgroups later when you finally have enough. if their trial results had come out in mid Oct and the updated “now with even more minorities” results came out in late Nov, that would have sped up the rollout by a month and a half.

1 Like

Some data/info from Israel:

2 Likes

I could be missing something (and maybe it’s less of a deal in israel… well, we know it’s less of a deal, but anyways), but it seems not valid to conclude 50% efficacy based on that if no control group, because of selection bias. Can’t the people vaccinated exhibit different behaviors and/or be in different demographic (age, etc) groups than the rest of the general population?

The relative drop off over time (just within the vaccination group) based on time since the vaccination seems more useful, though.

2 Likes
2 Likes
1 Like

Ruh roh:

https://soylentnews.org/breakingnews/article.pl?sid=21/01/15/0122256

1 Like

Again, replying here rather than politics,

When I read this, I assumed you were right and Trump’s claims were just his typical, optimistic exaggeration (or lies, if you prefer) on the virus / vaccine rollout. But actually, that was what PFE was saying in October before the election… delays. Here’s their CEO promising just that

https://www.pfizer.com/news/hot-topics/moving_at_the_speed_of_science

in March, I declared a bold ambition: that Pfizer would create a vaccine, and we would devote any and all resources necessary to be successful. I further announced, after consulting with our scientists, that we could have vaccine data ready to submit to the FDA by end of the third quarter, in October, and hopefully a hundred million doses delivered by the end of the year. I knew our goal was ambitious, but it would also be critical to protect against the second wave of cases that could accompany the return of colder weather in the Fall.

So I’m sure Trump just heard these optimistic estimates from the vaccine companies and repeated them.

3 Likes

I wish they would have said something about the timing of those serious cases of covid in people who’d gotten a shot. If it’s your first shot, you wouldn’t expect any immunity for 1.5-2 weeks so with infection rates running high, there could be a good chunk of those situations.

Still, it’s interesting that the PFE one is only giving about 50% protection (although I hear the MRNA one is better on that regard, 75%ish or so) after the first shot. I would have guessed higher from the low incidence rates in those trials during in the intervening month between shots. I guess they may well have been right to design their trials with two shots rather than one, even as some of the other trials used a single shot and seem to be getting 70-80% ballpark numbers.

Any poster to this thread, heck any Fragiledeal participant darn near, would likely be aware of the delay before their vaccination starts to “kick in” and offer them some protection. And any medical pro would know this as well.

But I’m less certain every “average Joe” in the general public would realize COVID-19 vulnerability remains for a while even after you get your shot(s).

2 Likes

Looks like the art of the deal is paying off. Production delays/issues with the PFE vaccine will impact EU/Canada deliveries fairly significantly for the next month or so, not US.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-15/pfizer-to-cut-covid-vaccine-deliveries-as-it-renovates-factory

NIPH said the temporary reduction in deliveries was “in connection with an upgrade of production capacity.” “The temporary reduction will affect all European countries,” it added.

I can confirm the Canadian natives are restless where immunizations are concerned. It’s not a pretty picture there. Course, with Trudeau in charge, what else would you expect!! :wink: