You mean it’s…artificial?
1 Like
Good news on the Pfizer vaccine:
The healthcare providers doing the vaccinations have stopped the practice of discarding, into the trash, two does of vaccine contained in every vial. There are seven vaccine doses in each vial. Up until now only five of those doses were being used, the remainder thrown out.
This change has the impact of vastly increasing, beyond the numbers announced at the outset, the number of available doses of Pfizer vaccine in America. Many more people will be able to be vaccinated than was initially thought.
You can think of this as Warp 2. Scotty has just given us “more power”. 
1 Like
I’m guessing that, at best, this will merely offset the vials lost due to refrigeration issues.
My own take is that this will go far beyond any such shrinkage. Word is 40% more Americans will be able to access the vaccine than was originally figured on. This is pretty terrific and will help to save American lives.
1 Like
That’s a strange characterization (seeming to blame people for being wasteful), but you can go with it. It was the pharmacists apparently who reported the observations.
Basically, there are multiple types of syringes/needles. So it takes a different amount of extra liquid (aside from the injected amount) depending on which is used. Additionally, there has to be a little extra, for a similar reason that a partial dose would be useless.
They still can’t mix from different vials. It may waste a needle or syringe if there’s only 90% of a dose remaining and they find this out only after unsuccessfully drawing it out.
“Sometimes a full dose or sometimes maybe two” doesn’t really equate to a 40% overall expected increase. To get to 40%, the mean amount would have to be 2 full doses extra.
It does make sense to make use of any full doses that are extra, though that will probably complicate tracking records. It’s interesting there seems to be a little more excess than usual.
I wonder if the temperature changes the volume much?(which would mean the volume would change through the process)
Well, yeah, the shrink (however large or small) is happening regardless. So this extra is increasing the number of people actually being vaccinated. But against expectations, it wont be as big of an increase as implied.
And remember, that extra is to ensure 5 full doses in each vial. There is some variability in the actual yield, so it isnt 40% more across the board. It’s “as much as 40%”.
5 Likes
Not strange at all, completely accurate, and any thought of blame placement is strictly between your ears. The people doing the throwing away were merely following orders, but a lot of vaccine was being discarded and now it is not being discarded.
Interesting, but also understandable. Pfizer is making damn certain they are delivering the doses they’re claiming to deliver. Even a few vials only yielding 4 full doses would create a pretty negative PR ding, and potential practical issues if the nurse feels pressured to quietly stretch out the shortage for a 90% fifth dose.
1 Like
Yes. Although that comes back now with waiving normal procedure. Now it could theoretically be a 90% sixth dose. But no one can point to pfizer. And hopefully there’s a lot less of those pressures.
Panel greenlights Moderna vaccine
A panel of outside experts on Thursday recommended that the Food and Drug Administration issue an emergency use authorization for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine
I don’t mean it’s “artificial”, I mean it’s not the same as the virus. “Artificial” means human-made (vs naturally occurring), and I suppose with all the tools we have today, the virus could probably be made artificially. But a mRNA-based vaccine is not a virus, it’s only part of the virus that’s needed to train the immune response. I.e., it simulates the virus as far as our immune system is concerned.
Then it’s a good thing I didnt claim it was a virus. Thus the artificial part of the infection, it’s merely tricking the body into producing the same response as a real infection. Ok, maybe “infecting” should’ve been in quotes, but my comment was about the two different means of achieving a single end result.
1 Like
but your comment also contained:
while you know (or should know) that “the two different means of achieving a single end result” are different not only in terms of “infection”, but also in terms of survival rates.
For a majority of people, the expected survival rate isnt all that different. As I said, the symptoms most people suffer from being infected are in the ballpark of the side effects of being vaccinated.
1 Like
Since a majority is only >50%, you’re technically correct. In this case though, that’s not the best kind of correct. It’s highly misleading. 49.9% leaves a big chunk of the population not in the majority.
What’s highly misleading is taking vastly different subgroups, and using the aggregate to assertain the risk for everyone.
2 Likes
What do you mean, exactly? Are you saying that a survival rate of 100% (vaccine) is not that different than a survival rate of ~99% (covid)?
I think he’s saying the survival rate for just that 99% is 100% either way… which is just… logically flawed.
And that still ignores all the severe (short/ medium term) losses or long term conditions that are being picked up by others in that 99%.
3 Likes