California’s funeral homes are full of corpses:
Why the scare quotes? Are you disputing that the JCVI are experts? And what is weird? Have you not noticed that there is a massive public health crisis, and that some decisions must be made based on imperfect information?
I mean, make your arguments as to why it may be the wrong call, but these are not “experts”, they are experts, and the decision may turn out to be right or wrong, but it is hardly weird.
Hospitals are full, and we’re in an massive crisis. We do have evidence that the first shot provides a high proportion of the total protection, although we don’t know how long that lasts. But experience with other vaccines tells us that the extended interval for the second shot probably will be okay. So administering twice the number of first shots may be the best risk/reward call to get the crisis under control.
Pennsylvania House Representative Mike Reese (R-Westmoreland/Somerset) has died of an apparent brain aneurysm. He was 42.
On December 7, he was diagnosed with COVID-19. He had been self-quarantining for a week and reportedly had only a mild case. News reports so far say that it is unclear if the aneurysm was related to the COVID infection.
As I recall, blood vessel damage is one of the less common side effects of having or having had COVID-19. I’m curious what an autopsy would show.
I’m sorry for his wife and children.
Well, having worked for decades in medicines licensing, I have never seen anything remotely like this before. One arm of government (the MHRA) examines the data, does the science, agrees that the drug - a novel drug class, at that - should be used in the way that has been shown to work; and another arm of government says, nah, use it in this completely untested way - on everyone.
We can disagree about this, but I think it’s weird.
j
Have you really not noticed that these are rather exceptional circumstances?
You are insinuating that the MHRA are diligently looking at the scientific evidence, while the JCVI as “another arm of government” are unqualified bureaucrats or something. This is the composition of the JCVI:
- Professor Andrew Pollard, Chair (University of Oxford)
- Professor Wei Shen Lim, Chair COVID-19 immunisation (Nottingham University Hospitals)
- Professor Anthony Harnden, Deputy Chair (University of Oxford)
- Professor Judith Breuer (University College Hospital)
- Dr Peter Elton (Greater Manchester, Lancashire, South Cumbria Strategic Clinical Network)
- Dr Maggie Wearmouth (East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust)
- Professor Matt Keeling (University of Warwick)
- Alison Lawrence (lay member)
- Professor Robert Read (Southampton General Hospital)
- Professor Anthony Scott (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
- Professor Adam Finn (University of Bristol)
- Dr Fiona van der Klis (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands)
- Professor Maarten Postma (University of Groningen)
- Professor Simon Kroll (Imperial College London)
- Dr Martin Williams (University Hospitals Bristol)
- Professor Jeremy Brown (University College London Hospitals)
To assert that this protocol is to “use it in this completely untested way” is just hyperbole. If we have tested two doses, we have obviously tested one dose. There is no plausibly greater safety concern with the delayed second dose. And we do have limited efficacy data for single dose, suggesting that a high proportion of the total protection comes from the first dose, at least for some period. The only aspect that’s uncertain is the efficacy of prolonged immunity with a delayed second dose.
I certainly don’t have the expertise to know for sure if this is the right decision. But it’s obvious, not “weird”, why they are making the call.
Here’s a sweet story:
Hmmm… dunno if it really fits here but… well, it is not just here in the Land of the Free that people are flouting restrictions because they’d rather party on…
…NZ update.
New Zealand have announced new restrictions on New Zealanders returning from the UK and the USA. They are now required to return a certified negative PCR test 72 hours prior to departure.
That’s on top of another new procedure for returnees from the UK and the US: on arrival they are required to have a test on Day Zero (in addition to the testing on Day 3 and Day 12).
Reading between the lines, the surges in the respective countries and the new, more virulent strains are the reasons for the changes. And the Ministry says that while they are confident that 14 days quarantine is still enough for the new mutant strains, they are “monitoring the situation”. We had 19 new cases at the borders today. We have six in isolation with the UK variant. The numbers are getting bigger.
This ain’t good.
Its heartbreaking for many New Zealanders overseas because now its even harder to get home. But its a clear sign that even with the vaccine things are far from over. Hunker down everyone. The surges from Christmas and New Years are going to be brutal.
Louis Gossett Jr. was hospitalized with COVID-19 in a GA hospital but was so “freaked out” by all the deaths that he checked out against advice.
84,979,651 total cases
1,843,442 dead
60,096,319 recovered
In the US:
20,904,701 total cases
358,682 dead
12,361,387 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Aside from COVID, I’m just praying that I don’t get any random “normal” thing that needs hospital care for the next 6 months.
The number of states reporting record high numbers of new cases (seven day average) has risen since the beginning of the year. It seems a bit early for the expected Christmas surge, but maybe that’s just because people traveled before Christmas.
New “highest ever” daily new cases since New Year’s Eve:
Maine
New York
Massachusetts
Connecticut
New Jersey
West Virginia
Virginia
Maryland
North Carolina
Arkansas
Kansas
Arizona
Mississippi
Alabama
Georgia
Texas
Florida
After going down for several weeks, the US as a whole has hit a new high in daily reported cases (seven day average), as well. The UK is up, too.And South Africa.
Larry King has been hospitalized for Covid for 10 days.
A San Jose Kaiser hospital staff member went to the ward in an inflatable costume to cheer up people on the ward. It may have led to infections.
Using a different jab for the booster is just as a last resort.
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence - Scenario: Immunization
Not quite sure why this is directed to me - what I was referring to was the decision to delay the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine to 12 weeks, a dose regimen that has never been tested.
I gather that there has been an erroneous report in the NYT about using a different vaccine for a second shot. BBC reports
The editor of the British Medical Journal has asked the New York Times to correct an article that says UK guidelines allow two Covid-19 vaccines to be mixed.
The US publication reported that UK health officials would allow patients to be given a second dose that is a different vaccine to their first…
… She said the NYT’s headline claiming UK guidelines say such substitutions “may happen” was “seriously misleading”.
j
I think it’s as likely an echo from the Thanksgiving surge.
I really hope it does not go the way it has in the UK.
We had a short period when things looked like they were down and stabilising just after Christmes, although a bouncback was expected, instead it has taken off again largely due to this new and more infectious mutation - some of that might be catch-up over the holiday period but the talk here is of even further restrictions.
This is almost certainly data backlog from the holiday. Note that cases dipped massively over the long Christmas weekend – people didn’t actually stop getting sick then, they just stopped getting tested and the results of those tests stopped getting reported by the various stage agencies. The daily average is now back to more or less exactly where it was before Christmas, but the Atlantic’s Covid Tracking Project, which is a great resource for making sense of the numbers, says not to expect normal reporting until around the middle of January.
I subscribe and didn’t see any error in the newspaper article.
As for the headline, I don’t believe in judging newspaper stories by the headline, but the current headline (“Britain Opens Door to Mix-and-Match Vaccinations, Worrying Experts”) seems to me accurate. It would have been more accurate if it read Britain Slightly Opens Door. But, given the way print newspapers are put together, it isn’t reasonable to judge newspaper headlines closely.
Now, personally, I don’t agree with the worried experts, because, as I have posted before, mix and match will
(a) Be rare
and
(b) Won’t likely hurt much anyway
However, some experts disagree with me. My views are not news. Theirs are.
As for the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal), it is an outstanding medical journal. But, in this case anyway, it is a questionable source for media criticism.