COVID-19 treatment and vaccine update thread

[Defiant]

If one olde person in a household gets the shot and the other one has to wait how safe will the one without the shot be?

Depends on whether the vaccine prevents transmission of the virus or not. Either way, you're going to want to still take precautions for some time.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

With the rush to produce a vaccine, we don't yet know how long it will remain effective and, as said above, whether a vaccinated person can still transmit Covid. So even if you're vaccinated you'll still want to take precautions. And it may become sort of like the flu where you need to get a shot on a regular basis.

[LordMortis]

If one olde person in a household gets the shot and the other one has to wait how safe will the one without the shot be?

You are injected with something this isn't a spreadable virus. The question is how safe the inoculated member is after receiving the vaccine. That will determine how likely they are to carry a virus home before their immune system deals with it.

[Daehawk]

we don't yet know how long it will remain effective

Thats the part I dont have any faith in.

[Defiant]

If one olde person in a household gets the shot and the other one has to wait how safe will the one without the shot be?

You aren't injected with something this isn't a spreadable virus. The question is how safe the inoculated member is after receiving the vaccine. That will determine how likely they are to carry a virus home before their immune system deals with it.

Yeah. Just to be clear, in my post, I didn't mean that the person that got the vaccine would transmit what they got, but rather the possibility that they wouldn't take precautions, go outside, get infected but have few or no symptoms (because of the vaccine) and then transmit it to the other one.

[Smoove_B]

As has been stated for a while, having the vaccine is good but being unable to vaccinate communities will be a problem:

Guilford County, North Carolina’s positivity rate is ticking up.

As public health chief for the county of 530,000, it’s Iulia Vann’s job to fight it with any tool she has.

The most effective option — a COVID-19 vaccine — is about to come online. But for Vann and many others in her position around the country, the question of how to get the shot into the arms of 330 million Americans remains unaddressed.

Congress has yet to appropriate any money for vaccine distribution. While the federal government has spent billions of dollars developing vaccines to prevent COVID-19, not a single federal dollar has been passed for the purpose of conducting the inoculation campaign itself.

Guilford County, which received $94 million in CARES Act funding that expires Dec. 31, expects to scrape together $1.2 million for public health in 2021.

As a reminder:

The Department of Health and Humans Services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have doled out around $340 million to the states in funding for vaccine distribution. But that falls far short of the $8.4 billion that state officials say is needed to effectively deploy the vaccine.

And:

“So much of this response has been in crisis mode, asking how to fund what should have already been going on, how do we put out fires,” Casalotti said. “We’ve been asking for months and months now to make these investments as one area where we wouldn’t have to put out a fire after it started. But we’re now at a place where it’s past time.”

More delays. More unnecessary suffering.

[Defiant]

Oxford COVID vaccine paper highlights lingering unknowns about results
The Oxford–AstraZeneca partnership is the first major developer to publish detailed data from phase III trials.

[Defiant]

Today the FDA released Pfizer’s Phase III vaccine trial data. This is big, as this is the first time we, scientists, have seen the data. Pfizer’s report was 92 pages long and the FDA report was 53 pages long. And, yes, I read it all. Here are your cliff notes…

Things are looking good. Well, not just good, they are looking great. This trial was as clean as it can get. There is nothing (big) we didn’t expect.

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.com/phase-iii-data/

[Defiant]

After an 81-year-old named William Shakespeare became the second person in the West to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in Britain outside clinical trials Tuesday, social media erupted with joy, puns and many quotes from the great British playwright.

“They really are prioritising the elderly: this guy is 456,” wrote one user, while the term “Two Gentlemen of Corona,” a play on “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” swiftly became a top trend in Britain.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... s-vaccine/

[Defiant]

[Smoove_B]

I still don't care what Nate Silver has to say about anything, including incomplete vaccination schedules, fwiw.

In other good news, Moderna continues experimenting on children. I think I have that right

Vaccine maker Moderna announced on Thursday that the first adolescents, ages 12 to under 18, in its Phase 2/3 study of coronavirus vaccine candidate mRNA-1273 have been given vaccine doses.

The study, conducted in collaboration with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, will evaluate the safety and efficacy of administering two vaccine doses 28 days apart, the announcement said.

Moderna noted that it intends to enroll 3,000 adolescents in the United States.

"We are pleased to begin this Phase 2/3 study of mRNA-1273 in healthy adolescents in the U.S. Our goal is to generate data in the spring of 2021 that will support the use of mRNA-1273 in adolescents in advance of the 2021 school year," Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in the announcement.

[hitbyambulance]

surprising no one, BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine approved by FDA for use in the US

[Smoove_B]

Can we make sure sports teams, rich people and the famous don't get the vaccine before front line medical staff, essential workers and the medically fragile?

Thanks.

Source confirms that the NHL is planning the private purchase of a COVID vaccine for all constituents involved in the potential upcoming season.

[Daehawk]

Hope it costs them a fortune.

[Daehawk]

Hope it costs them a fortune.

surprising no one, BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine approved by FDA for use in the US

I had been wondering why they went through the charade of thinking about it.

[$iljanus]

Hope it costs them a fortune.

surprising no one, BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine approved by FDA for use in the US

I had been wondering why they went through the charade of thinking about it.

How is this a charade? There was a deliberation over the data and they came to a conclusion. I'm sure Moderna will be next.

[Daehawk]

Unless theres a serious known flaw or problem they wont turn anyone down wit ha COVID vaccine.

[Kraken]

That's what they review the data to (hopefully not) find. It's hard to extrapolate to hundreds of millions from a sample of tens of thousands, and adverse reactions will inevitably reveal themselves when shots start going into all those arms. IIRC, the standard for vaccines is one in a million seriously bad results.

In welcome news, Mass. announced that prison personnel and inmates will be one of the earliest cohorts.

[hitbyambulance]

University of Queensland/CSL UQ-CSL v451 COVID-19 vaccine will not progress to Phase II/III after 'false positive HIV' test results in a few Phase I trial participants

https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2020 ... 19-vaccine

using the HIV-fragmented clamp was in order to save on vaccine development time...

https://au.news.yahoo.com/uq-csl-knew-c ... --spt.html

[Daehawk]

Huh wow. Thats like "I think Ill put a bomb in my gas tank and go faster"

As a side thought I was wondering today how the vaccine may interact with compromised immune people like HIV.

[The Meal]

And also this followup

[Smoove_B]

That's good to read. If there's line-jumping for the vaccine, that's going to be a problem.

[The Meal]

There's a bit of history there:

[Blackhawk]

You know the rules. Anybody attempting to jump the line goes to the back of the line.

[Smoove_B]

There's a bit of history there:

Whoa. I had no idea. I'll need to go read up on that - thanks!

[gilraen]

As a side thought I was wondering today how the vaccine may interact with compromised immune people like HIV.

Short answer - it won't work for someone who's immunocompromised. The way the vaccine works, at the very basic level, is to trigger an immune system response, so next time when your immune system encounters the real thing, it knows how to fight it. When someone's immune system is too weak to respond, it cannot "learn" from the vaccine.

[Smoove_B]

Which is why it's even more important for those of us that can vaccinate to get vaccinated. Like every other vaccination scenario, we then act as a barrier to spread - protecting those that cannot be vaccinated.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

As a side thought I was wondering today how the vaccine may interact with compromised immune people like HIV.

Short answer - it won't work for someone who's immunocompromised. The way the vaccine works, at the very basic level, is to trigger an immune system response, so next time when your immune system encounters the real thing, it knows how to fight it. When someone's immune system is too weak to respond, it cannot "learn" from the vaccine.

I'm not sure that is entirely true or, at the very least, it depends on the severity of the immunocompromization. For instance, I am on medication that compromises my immune system, but I still am supposed to get a flu shot every year.

[gilraen]

As a side thought I was wondering today how the vaccine may interact with compromised immune people like HIV.

Short answer - it won't work for someone who's immunocompromised. The way the vaccine works, at the very basic level, is to trigger an immune system response, so next time when your immune system encounters the real thing, it knows how to fight it. When someone's immune system is too weak to respond, it cannot "learn" from the vaccine.

I'm not sure that is entirely true or, at the very least, it depends on the severity of the immunocompromization. For instance, I am on medication that compromises my immune system, but I still am supposed to get a flu shot every year.

Correct, I'm not saying it's a one-size-fits-all approach. Some flu vaccines do work in most immunocompromised patients, even though they don't offer the full protection that they would give a healthy person. But for the COVID-19 vaccine, at least so far, severe immunosuppression is a contraindication.

[The Meal]

When I asked my doctor about the vaccine earlier this week, he said the immunocompromised would likely be in the first tier of vaccine recipients.

Relevant, of course, because I live with two immunocompromised individuals.

[Kraken]

As a side thought I was wondering today how the vaccine may interact with compromised immune people like HIV.

Short answer - it won't work for someone who's immunocompromised. The way the vaccine works, at the very basic level, is to trigger an immune system response, so next time when your immune system encounters the real thing, it knows how to fight it. When someone's immune system is too weak to respond, it cannot "learn" from the vaccine.

I'm not sure that is entirely true or, at the very least, it depends on the severity of the immunocompromization. For instance, I am on medication that compromises my immune system, but I still am supposed to get a flu shot every year.

Correct, I'm not saying it's a one-size-fits-all approach. Some flu vaccines do work in most immunocompromised patients, even though they don't offer the full protection that they would give a healthy person. But for the COVID-19 vaccine, at least so far, severe immunosuppression is a contraindication.

My sister's oncologist just cleared her to be in the first cohort. She just finished her chemotherapy this week.

[YellowKing]

Our hospital sent out a survey to employees on whether they would definitely take the vaccine, maybe take the vaccine, or refuse the vaccine. Less than half (45%) said they would take it. 25% answered maybe. The remaining 30% said they would not.

This is in a hospital which is very accustomed to mandatory flu shots, tetanus shots, TB tests, etc, and has people who know how important this is. I think it's going to be a really hard sell to the general population, at least initially.

[hitbyambulance]

Our hospital sent out a survey to employees on whether they would definitely take the vaccine, maybe take the vaccine, or refuse the vaccine. Less than half (45%) said they would take it. 25% answered maybe. The remaining 30% said they would not.

This is in a hospital which is very accustomed to mandatory flu shots, tetanus shots, TB tests, etc, and has people who know how important this is. I think it's going to be a really hard sell to the general population, at least initially.

i wonder for these sorts of surveys if any would have a fill-in option for _which_ vaccine one would, or would not, accept? like say, one is feeling suspicious about the Pfizer, but is ok with the NovaVax.

[Little Raven]

Which is why it's even more important for those of us that can vaccinate to get vaccinated. Like every other vaccination scenario, we then act as a barrier to spread - protecting those that cannot be vaccinated.

Maybe.

The announcement gave us the headline, but there is a still lack of fine detail.

We do not know if the vaccine stops you catching and spreading the virus or just stops you from getting ill.

If the virus just stops the very severe form of the disease, but you can still catch it and spread it, then getting vaccinated protects you, but it doesn't do anything for those who cannot be vaccinated.

Unless I'm missing something.

[Smoove_B]

I guess I'm hopeful it does stop people from spreading it, but I guess we'll see as we continue along in this experiment.

A data point for NJ, which I think helps to frame the bigger issues:

Department of Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli said six “prepositioned hospitals” — AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center in Atlantic City, Cooper University Hospital in Camden, Hackensack University Medical Center, Morristown Medical Center, University Hospital in Newark, and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick — will receive the first 76,050 doses.

...

In all, 650,000 individuals are eligible under the first phase of people eligible for the vaccine, including those who work in different kinds of healthcare facilities and long-term care facilities, Persichilli said.

That's...a big gap. I know others with much higher visibility have been saying it, but I'll repeat it - this vaccination effort is not going to be an on/off switch for America. It's going to help and those that need it most should be vaccinated first, but we have a long way to go before we're in the clear.

[Defiant]

Which is why it's even more important for those of us that can vaccinate to get vaccinated. Like every other vaccination scenario, we then act as a barrier to spread - protecting those that cannot be vaccinated.

Maybe.

The announcement gave us the headline, but there is a still lack of fine detail.

We do not know if the vaccine stops you catching and spreading the virus or just stops you from getting ill.

If the virus just stops the very severe form of the disease, but you can still catch it and spread it, then getting vaccinated protects you, but it doesn't do anything for those who cannot be vaccinated.

Unless I'm missing something.

At the very least, less people getting severely ill will mean more healthcare access available to those who do.

And while I am not a virologist, I would think it's possible it could reduce the likelihood of transmission (reduce the viral load enough so that you transmit it less or maybe if you're coughing less, you eject less of the virus) without eliminating it. Of course, we're still going to continue taking precautions for some time no matter what.

[hitbyambulance]

mass media-wise, it is kind of whiplashy to go from mopey doomy NYTimes-style 'there may never be a vaccine; here's what our new normal is going to look like tl;dr everything sucks from now on to forever' thinkpieces in the summer to 'OMG OMG INJECT THIS INTO YOU NOW NOW NOW' now (and one of the Moderna vaccine developers quoted as saying 'oh yeah, i always knew it would work.') - it _is_ disconcerting.

[$iljanus]

Holy shit!

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Friday told Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to submit his resignation if the agency does not clear the nation’s first coronavirus vaccine by day’s end, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss what happened.

The threat came on the same day that President Trump tweeted that the FDA is “a big, old, slow turtle” in its handling of vaccines, while exhorting Commissioner Stephen Hahn to “get the dam vaccines out NOW.” He added: “Stop playing games and start saving lives!!!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... d-vaccine/

[hepcat]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I keep hearing about one vaccine. Weren’t there 3 announced recently? What happened to the other two?

[Defiant]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I keep hearing about one vaccine. Weren’t there 3 announced recently? What happened to the other two?

My understanding is that Moderna is currently under review and it's likely it will be approved soon (though I don't think the data has been published yet?) . Oxford-AstraZeneca recently published it's data (I posted about it upthread), although from the article I posted, there are some questions surrounding it.