It’s not just limited to the SDMB, newbreakers though we are:
Bloomberg article (paywalled)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-09/iran-says-u-s-sanctions-preventing-purchases-of-covid-vaccines
Human Rights Watch:
Washington Post:
ETA: damnit! but I’ll leave the links anyway. Bloomberg allows a certain number of views.
The next two are Bloomberg links. Discourse doesn’t like them, but the links are good.
iran-says-u-s-sanctions-preventing-purchases-of-covid-vaccines
The US made an exemption in the sanctions to allow Iran to buy vaccines from the WHO “under pressure from world public opinion.”.
I’ve done some research on this. Here’s one:
There’s also acres of (free!) info on the WHO’s eradication program. Here’s their report, which is excellent:
Smallpox and its eradication / F. Fenner … [et al.] (who.int)
and other ancillary stuff here:
82,327,498 total cases
1,796,545 dead
58,338,906 recovered
In the US:
19,977,704 total cases
346,579 dead
11,844,472 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
The US will exceed 20,000,000 total cases tomorrow.
There is a small chance that US deaths will exceed 350,000 tomorrow as well.
You seem to have missed my actual point that all countries worked together, even countries that hate each other with an unbridled passion.
The UK has approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine which doesn’t need to be stored at extremely low temperatures. This will be a game-changer as it doesn’t need to be stored at very low temperatures, especially for those countries without the ultra cold storage infrastructure.
The length of time between the first two doses is also 12 weeks which also means a lot more people can get some form of protection more quickly. But it’s not clear what percentage of protection this vaccine programme will have.
I really should read my sentences back after I post them…
especially when you’re posting at extremely low temperatures, I gather.
He looked to be in reasonably good shape. It’s another reminder that everyone is at risk of dying from covid-19.
To clarify the situation in the UK re the A-Z vaccine: it (like the Pfizer vaccine before it) has not been licensed; rather:
This medicinal product has been given authorisation for temporary supply by the UK Department of Health and Social Care and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. It does not have a marketing authorisation, but this temporary authorisation grants permission for the medicine to be used for active immunisation of individuals aged 18 years and older for the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
This is the source document, the most interesting sections of which are (to my mind, anyway):
Posology
The COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca vaccination course consists of two separate doses of 0.5 ml each. The second dose should be administered between 4 and 12 weeks after the first dose (see section 5.1).
The intention in the UK seems to be to stick to 12 weeks*. This would have the effect of widening the initial rollout, providing a decent measure of protection for as many people as possible as quickly as possible. However, there appears to be more to it than that:
Because of logistical constraints, the interval between dose 1 and dose 2 [in the clinical studies] ranged from 4 to 26 weeks.
and
Exploratory analyses showed that increased immunogenicity was associated with a longer dose interval (see Immunogenicity Table 3). Efficacy is currently demonstrated with more certainty for dose intervals from 8 to 12 weeks. Data for intervals longer than 12 weeks are limited.
So there does seem to be a rationale for the 12 week gap between doses.
For summarised efficacy data (including efficacy after dose 1), see the first table in section 5.1. Note that the column headings to the table are out of alignment with the body of the table -but you’ll figure it out. Looks like the documentation was published rather hastily - not a surprise; and chapeau to the poor sods who spent Christmas working on this.
j
(*) - I’ll see if I can find a decent cite for this later
Missed the edit with:
ETA - BTW the BBC reports that
Trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine also showed that when people were given a half dose then a full dose, effectiveness hit 90%.
But there was not enough clear data to approve the half-dose, full-dose idea.
j
One rationale may be in data that hasn’t yet appeared in a good medical journal, but that was available to British regulators.
The other rationale is that some protection is better than none, and that no one has died of COVID contracted more than ten days of so of the first shot, or even met hospitalization criteria.
It looks like Missouri, Tennessee and Nevada are set to join the club of states with more than 1,000 deaths per million population by year’s end.
With a rate of 1056 deaths per million, the USA is currently in 7th place among countries with more than 10 million population.
Czechia and UK are at 1066, so the USA may well catch up and be at #5 in the near future.
No offense but that post sounds like someone hoping for it.
Moderator Warning
That is actually quite deliberately offensive. I told you very recently not to be snarky to other posters. This is an official warning for being a jerk and failure to follow moderator instructions. Another one like that and you will find yourself banned from this thread.
Colibri
Quarantine Zone Moderator
Well, isn’t this just swell. Five hundred doses had to be thrown out.
The person has already been fired. Maybe jail next?
If it was their intention to make it unusable then there should be criminal charges for sure. It’s a tad weird that the confession quote doesn’t actually include that kind of thing. Maybe they “intentionally removed” the vaccine with the intention of stealing it … umm, for orphans.
83,066,659 total cases
1,812,188 dead
58,868,485 recovered
In the US:
20,216,991 total cases
350,778 dead
11,998,794 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
The US death toll managed to go well over 350,000 today thanks to 3,880 deaths (a new and soon-to-broken single day record, btw).
And license revocation, if it’s relevant.
I started a Pit thread about this story. If you don’t believe in it for yourself, that’s fine, but DO NOT prevent other people from getting theirs!
Wow. This makes me think that all storage of the vaccines should have some kind of protocol where no single person can access it. Like, it should take 2 people.
This time, it was ruining it in an obvious way. There must be people out there, though, who would tamper with it in invisible ways if there were any opportunity.