US Secures 300 Million Doses, Almost a Third, of Potential AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine (financialpost.com) 189
schwit1 shares a report from Financial Post: The United States has secured almost a third of the first one billion doses planned for AstraZeneca's experimental COVID-19 vaccine by pledging up to $1.2 billion, as world powers scramble for medicines to get their economies back to work. While not proven to be effective against the coronavirus, vaccines are seen by world leaders as the only real way to restart their stalled economies, and even to get an edge over global competitors. The U.S. Department of Health agreed to provide up to $1.2 billion to accelerate AstraZeneca's vaccine development and secure 300 million doses for the United States.
"This contract with AstraZeneca is a major milestone in Operation Warp Speed's work toward a safe, effective, widely available vaccine by 2021," U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said. The vaccine, previously known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and now as AZD1222, was developed by the University of Oxford and licensed to British drugmaker AstraZeneca. Immunity to the new coronavirus is uncertain and so the use of vaccines unclear. The U.S. deal allows a late-stage -- Phase III -- clinical trial of the vaccine with 30,000 people in the United States.
"This contract with AstraZeneca is a major milestone in Operation Warp Speed's work toward a safe, effective, widely available vaccine by 2021," U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said. The vaccine, previously known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and now as AZD1222, was developed by the University of Oxford and licensed to British drugmaker AstraZeneca. Immunity to the new coronavirus is uncertain and so the use of vaccines unclear. The U.S. deal allows a late-stage -- Phase III -- clinical trial of the vaccine with 30,000 people in the United States.
The Virgin antibody vs. the CHADox1 vaccine (Score:2)
Promising to shell out hard cold cash for this is probably the smartest move they've made since this whole mess started. Let's just hope the gamble (and it is a gamble, still) pays off.
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Let's just hope the gamble (and it is a gamble, still) pays off.
Let's keep things in perspective. The lockdowns cost the US economy more than $1.2B every 30 minutes. So this is a no-brainer. We should be throwing money at anything that has a chance of working.
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Let's keep things in perspective. The lockdowns cost the US economy more than $1.2B every 30 minutes.
Source? The lockdowns have been in effect for roughly 2 months. 1.2B every 30 minutes for 2 months equals 3.456 trillion dollars. Total GDP in 2019 averaged $3.572 trillion over two months. Are you saying the lockdowns have idled 97% of the economy?
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Real estate is dead. 6% of GDP
Restaurants are dead. 4% of GDP
Construction is dead (see real estate). 6% of GDP
Car manufacturing is dead. 3% of GDP
The IT world just got eaten by Microsoft Teams. 0% of GDP?
What the fuck is left?
81% of the economy? I'm no mathematician, but last I checked 81 is bigger than 3.
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Just goes to show that there are tin-foil hatters in Africa and India as well. You nutters seem to think that Gates is an utter moron, which even the dumbest redneck in Louisiana knows is stupid. It's a mystery to me how some people can remember to continue breathing.
Playing out the strategy (Score:2)
Re:Playing out the strategy (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, 1.2bn to buy our doses is a bargain. Sheesh, the military blows that in nanoseconds for less effect.
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Oh please, that's so Hollywood.
This is real life, not a movie. Happy ends only exist in movies.
This vaccine already shown to probably not work! (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm surprised to hear this news because 4 days ago it was announced this particular vaccine failed animal testing and is therefore unlikely to work in humans. We can't know for sure about humans until enough human trials have been done, but all the monkeys in the test using this vaccine caught covid-19.
~Arkade 1
The faaaacts...
~Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), The Maltese Falcon(1941)
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15... [npr.org]
Meet Dr. Zhong Nanshan, The Public Face Of The COVID-19 Fight In China
Dr. Nanshan framed many things in a CNN report in which he said waiting for a perfect vaccine will be problematic (paraphrasing).
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And only 2 months ago (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone was defending Trump (though I'm not sure of the rational behind it) saying that no he was never in talks with a private company overseas to secure a large supply exclusive for the USA.
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That was a German company, and the damning claim then was the never-substantiated claim that Trump was trying to get the US exclusive access to that vaccine. In this case, the UK gets the first 30 million vaccines, and the US would only get 30% of the first billion doses.
Are you proud to re-raise an irrelevant slander?
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Are you proud to re-raise an irrelevant slander?
What makes you think I'm slandering Trump? I'm slandering the idiots who have done an about face now previously attacking the president for attempting to get exclusive access and now celebrating it. That is very relevant.
Honestly it just shows how insanely stupid most commentators are. Even you are defending Trump saying the previous claim was unsubstantiated instead of celebrating the fact that the leader of a country is attempting to put his people first. Now you're saying that the leader of a country hav
Famous Last Words (Score:2)
From Wikipedia: In September 2018 he made headlines commenting on his pay of £9.4m in salary and bonuses,"The truth is I’m the lowest-paid CEO in the whole industry", he said.
Tranlsation (Score:2)
All the other CEOs are even more overpaid than me.
interesting bet (Score:2)
So it's a 1.2 billion bet that this particular vaccine will work.
How many of those bets do they intend to make?
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Usually, quite a few. I bet this pales in comparison to the cancer treatments. The US especially gives out many grants to research facilities around the world (like the lab that discovered the virus) and the spin off or to-market private companies to speed up viability testing of various drugs, cures, etc.
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About 70,000+ given what we're putting in as stimulus to the economy. This is piddle money in the scheme of things. Honestly we should be funding anything that shows a decent chance of working. It doesn't matter if we fund 20 that don't work if we do get one that does, even knocking a month off of the duration will save money in the end.
4$ is insurance (Score:2)
How much will they cost when all the copays, profits and other health insurance bullshit gets added. You can expect these to retail around 400$ price point.
Isn't the only way (Score:2)
>"vaccines are seen by world leaders as the only real way to restart their stalled economies"
Well, it isn't. Simply open with precautions: Isolate those with pre-existing conditions (who are really the only ones at any real statistical risk of severe symptoms), strongly encourage continued use of masks when in close proximity to others and handwashing procedures, and monitor the situation. It isn't that difficult.
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But I agree this is a choice yo
What does 300 million does look like? (Score:2)
What the fuck (Score:2)
"While not proven to be effective against the coronavirus, vaccines are seen by world leaders as the only real way to restart their stalled economies..."
Well if it it's not effective then I'm glad we only paid 1.2 BILLION dollars for it.
Good luck (Score:2)
Good luck getting the growing anti-vax movement to sign up for a vaccine.
RNA Virus Vaccine (Score:2)
Why are we paying all this money for a vaccine that doesn't exist or may never exist? We have never ever had a vaccine against RNA viruses. We never got one for SARS it ended up just going away. I think a vaccine for Covid-19 is a long way off, if ever. I seriously doubt they will find one in a year or two. It is just the nature of the science for RNA viruses.
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We only need 70% of the people to be immune to achieve herd immunity.
Show your working.
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That depends. If the social distancing is sufficient, that would probably be correct. But if people go back into restaurants with air conditioning, church choirs, etc. then you need a higher level of immunity.
The R factor for COVID-19 is very dependent on the environment in which you are figuring. Air flows are extremely important. So is the level of activity in the throat and vocal chords.
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We only need 70% of the people to be immune to achieve herd immunity.
We don't really know the HIT (herd immunity threshold) for COVID-19. I looked it up. Publish figures are anywhere between 29–74%. With a spread that wide I'd consider it an unknown until we have further studies. Note that some other airborne transmission diseases like Measles and Pertussis have HITs of 92-95%.
Re:Looks Like Enough (Score:5, Informative)
HIT is a function of R0, the basic propagation rate of the virus. Specifically, it's about (R0-1)/R0, because the goal is to ensure that when a person gets the disease, on average less than one of the R0 people they would pass it to are susceptible.
R0 is much higher for the other diseases you mention, which is why their HITs are much higher.
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I don't think it's 70% for herd immunity and WHO said 2-3% have been infected. For Mumps herd immunity requires 92% vaccination. I've seen it said that COVID had an R0 of 3 but R0 is not static, it changes depending on conditions. The R0 of 3 for COVID was when there was already caution about the disease, the R0 of COVID was a high as 6 before lock-downs, social distancing, mask wearing etc. That 3 out of ten wouldn't catch COVID from the other 3 out of ten people sounds highly unlikely to me unless lock-do
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I think your estimate on the number of people already infected and recovered is rather high.
But if we end up with extra vaccine, I'm sure USAID can figure out how to use it in other countries for the state depertment's "soft power" operations... if there is enough of a state department left to do anything competent at all at that point, that is, considering how this administration has abused it.
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And the American healthcare system should ensure that about 200 million doses go to the people who can afford to pay, while the remainder sit in refrigerators waiting for the right price.
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Er... the US gov't has already paid for it, $1.2B, so from that point, it'll likely be free to all US citizens. Hopefully that won't mean I have to drive 50 miles to some gov't central vaccination center and wait in a 3 mile long line to get it, but can instead show up at my local CVS to get it.
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Er... the US gov't has already paid for it, $1.2B, so from that point, it'll likely be free to all US citizens. Hopefully that won't mean I have to drive 50 miles to some gov't central vaccination center and wait in a 3 mile long line to get it, but can instead show up at my local CVS to get it.
1) I'm not clear whether the $1.2B is to fully prepay for the vaccine, or is merely to secure the right to buy the vaccines when ready.
2) Is the 3 mile line before or after the 6-foot social distancing?
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>Er... the US gov't has already paid for it, $1.2B, so from that point, it'll likely be free to all US citizens
That is by far the funniest, dumbest comment I have seen this week.
Good luck with that thought!
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That is by far the funniest, dumbest comment I have seen this week.
Who benefits from an 18-year-old getting the vaccine?
Hint: Not the 18-year-old.
If rich boomers don't want to die, they will need to make the vaccine as accessible as possible.
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I am not sure what US you are talking about. But in These United States, That's Commie Talk!
We don't want the government to pay for anything, even if it means an overall cheaper and effective deployment.
We can put on our grave stones, because we had all died. At least we weren't commies!
May be useless (Score:4, Insightful)
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Worse, there's a small, but nonzero chance that the vaccine kills people at a higher rate than the disease. One way that COVID-19 causes deaths is by infecting the epithelial cells in your blood vessels. Your immune system reacts to that, which causes blood vessel inflammation that cuts off blood flow to your heart, brain, or kidneys. A dead virus could potentially cause the same reaction, but because a decent amount is likely to get into your blood vessels from the needle puncture, it might do so at a
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Actually there is a very good chance that all 300 million doses sit in refrigerators or are simply thrown away. There is zero guarantee that what they have will work as a vaccine at all.
Quite.
It's a $1.2 billion dollar bet that this vaccine will be effective.
If it loses we're out about $3.63 per citizen.
if it wins we stop the virus in its tracks months earlier - with the US getting a third of the first 900 million doses and the rest of the world still getting theirs earlier and faster that without the deal.
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Re:Looks Like Enough (Score:5, Informative)
There are maybe 5% infected not more. And this grabbing of vaccine is ugly. It should be evenly distributed around the whole world, not "I get the vaccine first" war and leave the poor out.
Actually the developing world will be getting the vaccine faster than they otherwise would have. That $1.2B and 30,000 person clinical trial to accelerate things, that's shaving a year or more off the timetable. That second batch of a billion doses will be available before the first batch of non-accelerated vaccine would have otherwise been available.
Re: Looks Like Enough (Score:3, Funny)
We must implement a new People's Five Year Vaccine Plan! We shall use our native potatoes and wheat grown only by the most patriotic People's Farmers on shared land for all our use!
We shall overcome the Imperialists together, Comrade! Fight on! For the motherland!
Re: Looks Like Enough (Score:5, Informative)
Though it has to be said that it is actually "big socialist government" that is funding the development and availability of the vaccine. The "capitalist pigdog bit" only comes in if and when you get charged $300 a shot for it. Given the need to get as many people as possible vaccinated to create herd immunity and get the economy fully back up to speed and the strangely powerful anti-vax lobby it seems unlikely that it will cost the user anything at first deployment. There is a false dichotomy between "big government" and "capitalism". You need a combination of both to be a sucessful nation.
Re: Looks Like Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad to see a commonsense post.
Throwing 2.2 trillion dollars at the virus in the US has done not one fucking thing to mitigate the virus.
For that much money, I should be able to test myself every 15 minutes and have a goddam orgasm on every tenth occasion.
People don't need money. They need an answer to the virus such that we can go back to normal.
All we've done so far is given welfare checks to everybody. That makes every Republican a social Democrat and gives a vacuous definition to fiscal conservative.
It's a sad state of affairs when the America I used to know (I'm 74) succumbs to confusion, incompetence, ignorance, stupidity, capitalism, and politics instead of innovation, research, and development, and improvisation and a reliance on the scientific and healthcare professions to tackle a problem in their wheelhouse.
Re: Looks Like Enough (Score:2)
- No one has regeared factories to produce ventilators and masks. That's why there's no shortage of either now.
- No one is working on cures or vaccines. We don't debate the results here on
- No one is listening to medical professionals. We all just on our own decided to shut down the whole fucking economy for 2 months so far. Just because.
Omg, the virtue signaling is so
Re: Looks Like Enough (Score:4, Informative)
the next time the Democrats take power, as they must eventually, they're just going to spend the treasury dry again
Give it up. We all know what happens with the tax cuts when the R team is in charge. There is no fiscally conservative major party, just politicians who turn around and complain about it whenever its convenient for them.
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This. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats tax and spend, whereas Republicans borrow and spend. And Democrats spend more on science and arts, whereas Republicans spend more on the military and surveillance. But they're both spending addicts.
But IMO, the main problem is not the amount we spend, but rather the poor return that we get on those expenditures. We should be spending a lot more intelligently than we are, and always looking for ways to apply new technology to reduc
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And there are 1,621,000 cases in the US, with the asymptomatic vastly outnumbering those with symptoms, so I think you are wrong, there are likely far more than 5% having been infected.
My friend has probably had it. He had a pretty serious case of pinkeye a couple months ago, and his sister in law, a nurse, said, "Oh, yeah, you've got it." Now, nobody knows about him officially, he's not in any database that says he's ever had it. And BTW he'd like to get an antibody test to be sure, but where is it?
Re:Looks Like Enough (Score:4, Insightful)
The FDA even stopped a Bill Gates-linked entity distributing the random test he was funding, because they ... shock horror... tell people the results instead of keeping it a secret (surveillance study)
The medical industry and it's regulator enforce even bigger monopolies than Microsoft did in it's prime. Maybe there were good reasons for this, but now it's beginning to wear thin - antitrust should look at the medical industry.
Re: Looks Like Enough (Score:3)
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Re:Looks Like Enough (Score:4, Interesting)
And BTW he'd like to get an antibody test to be sure, but where is it? You need the FBI, Scotland Yard, and Interpol to be able to find out how to get one.
In San Diego there is company named Genalyte that is partnering with the San Diego Blood Bank that will test you for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies so they can know if you can be a "convalescent plasma" donor. It's free of charge. My friend just emailed me a few minutes ago to say:
Negative for both IgM and IgG antibodies. The provider says "You likely have no recent exposure to SAR-CoV-2 or have yet to develop an immune response." This was a "definitive" result, not indeterminate.
Re: Looks Like Enough (Score:4)
This is actually a good idea, get people to donate blood as per regular, test blood, if you are positive, you get informed, if you test that youâ(TM)ve had it and have the anti-body, they can use the plasma to treat others, and keep the blood.
The testing is free, the blood bank gets the blood, the needy get the plasma , thatâ(TM)s a win/win/win!
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Pinkeye isn't one of the major reported symptoms of COVID-19, and it *is* a symptom of a not-uncommon infection. So that doesn't sound like COVID to me.
Possibly I've gotten bitten by Poe's law, of course.
P.S.: There are several different antibody tests. Some aren't accurate enough to use for diagnosis, but only accurate enough to use for population statistics. And some of the tests beingsold can't tell COVID from distilled water. IIUC the Gates test was good for population statistics, but not known to
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I heard somewhere that pinkeye happens in about 10% of cases.
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And there are 1,621,000 cases in the US, with the asymptomatic vastly outnumbering those with symptoms, so I think you are wrong, there are likely far more than 5% having been infected.
I hope you are correct, but we are making extrapolations from somewhat wobbly data. I would guess a mortality rate in the vicinity of 0.5% to 1% and 100k deaths implies between 10 million and 20 million already infected, which is in the ballpark of 5% of the general populace.
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They are actually doing random antibody testing for surveillance. Downtown NYC is at 25%. There is no way the entire country is anywhere near that.
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There are maybe 5% infected not more.
And this grabbing of vaccine is ugly. It should be evenly distributed around the whole world, not "I get the vaccine first" war and leave the poor out.
Have you not heard? "America First!" is the war-cry of the new barbarians....
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China may have surpassed the US but we don't know
If the carnage in China was proportionate to that in the US, in other words seven to ten million of million cases and over half a million dead (minimum) we'd know it. China maybe a closed society but it is not so closed that they could easily hide the kind of runaway pandemic Trump has created in the US with his denialism. A US scale pandemic in China would spill over into neighbouring countries in a big way even with a lockdown, which incidentally, China no longer has.
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Even in the US it's not a runaway pandemic. And you can find sources that say China is doing pretty bad:
The Chinese government itself does not know the extent of the virus and is as blind as the rest of the world. Midlevel bureaucrats in the city of Wuhan, where the virus originated, and elsewhere in China have been lying about infection rates, testing and death counts, fearful that if they report numbers that are too high they will be punished, lose their position or worse.
https://www.nationalreview.com... [nationalreview.com] https://english.alarabiya.net/... [alarabiya.net]
Firstly I have serous issues with equating a 21 million drop in mobile phone users in China with 21 million corona cases without some more substantial proof. You are going to have to do better than that. Secondly, the US government does not know the extent of the US pandemic either but at least the Chinese implemented lockdowns while the US leadership at the highest levels is raging against any preventative measures in the name of MAGA. That being said, even if that figure of 640.000 corona case in China is
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US = 1.6 million
China = 83 thousand.
I can understand a 2/3 or 3/4 but if China is able to hide 19/20 cases, I think that says more about US (and everyone else's) incompetency in regards to intelligence gathering than it says about the overwhelming superiority of the China censorship state. I mean if this was the case, we might as well give up and start learning Chinese. The bigger economic, military, ... everything game was won before the rest of us read the rule book.
So I hope you understand how idotic f
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There are maybe 5% infected not more. And this grabbing of vaccine is ugly. It should be evenly distributed around the whole world, not "I get the vaccine first" war and leave the poor out.
Speaking of the worlds poor, I wonder how many vaccines will be bought with the billions of American dollars that have been funneled into WHO coffers in the last 5 years.
Oh, and regarding even distribution, the virus isn't evenly distributed around the world. Sadly we act as if the US hasn't (or isn't well on their way) to justifying every bit of that procurement.
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Oh, and regarding even distribution, the virus isn't evenly distributed around the world.
First, if you're deriving that from publicly available charts of reported infections, those figures are going to have a lot of under-reporting in countries that don't do enough testing and frankly can't even competently monitor their hospitals and burials.
Second, by the the time a vaccine becomes available, the only places where it won't have spread fairly evenly will be islands which were able to cut off all travel and managed to isolate and contain it when they only had a few cases, e.g. New Zealand, Aust
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It's also a bit foolish. There are approx. 100 different vaccines under development, and they are all different. It's quite reasonable to hope that at least one of them will be successful...it's not reasonable to say "it will be *this* one".
That said, investing in vaccine development is a good idea, and I suppose that expecting some sort of payback is reasonable. But not at the cost of looking bad, because if the horse you backed isn't the one that wins, you may find a bad reputation puts you at the foot
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What I heard is that those 100+ vaccines can be divided into 7 main families or types of vaccine, so on average about 15 groups working on similar vaccines times 7. Still a good chance that a couple of those types of vaccines will work. The scary part was how long it can take to manufacture a billion doses of some of those vaccines, namely close to a year.
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Given the very sporadic testing in the USA, and the poorly demonstated effectiveness of the tsting, that "5%" number is not reliable. There has been an enormous amount of "curve fitting" in many growth charts, and the data is too uncertain. Even if true, there is apparently a real risk of re-infection. Cases have been reported, so the vaccine may not be effectively for long.
"Spreading the vaccine evenly" is also very foolish. Vaccinating people who travel, for example, or health care workers would reduce it
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As someone who doesn't live in the US, I don't mind.
The US doesn't grab all of it, only one third. In exchange for a lot of cash. There is a chance that the US intervention makes the difference between a vaccine and no vaccine at all. And I prefer seeing some priority treatment than staying miserable together.
We need a balance between rewarding those who help the most and the common good, and this is not a bad deal. And if the US becomes immune, we all benefit. Same for China or any other country that is an
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And this grabbing of vaccine is ugly. It should be evenly distributed around the whole world, not "I get the vaccine first" war and leave the poor out.
Oh fuck right off. The US subsidized the entire world's healthcare R&D budget with our health insurance and outright hosting megacorps selling at cost to most of the rest of the world.
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The US is leading the world in Covid-19 cases. While I haven't checked the numbers, it is indeed possible that an even distribution of the vaccine would mean the US grabs more than a third of the doses.
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And this grabbing of vaccine is ugly.
This isn't "grabbing" the vaccine.
This is "paying for" the vaccine.
American tax dollars are funding the research and production. The clinical trials will be conducted in America on Americans. So it is logical that Americans will be first in line when the vaccine is ready.
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The 300 million is supposedly 1/3rd of the expected 1 Billion output, so will not preclude others getting the vaccine. There should still be some left.
It certainly won't be precluding the United Kingdom as we're first on the list of anyone who is getting it, just in case Trump thought his $1.2Bn got him to the front of the queue.
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Latest word on this is that those testing positive long after beating the disease do not shed contagious virus. It is inert.
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https://www.sciencealert.com/t... [sciencealert.com] and plenty of others if you google
They recover, meaning they test negative for a couple of days, then they start coughing up the dead lung cells as the body starts healing the damage. Those cells contain the DNA of the virus even though it's now dead, so they start to test positive again for a while. The cells deepest in the lungs may take weeks or months to expell.
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Well, *something* is causing those particles to be expelled...and sometimes after over 40 day since "cleared". Perhaps you're right. That would be a lot better than many possibilities that have occurred to me.
Re:Looks Like Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Latest word on this is that those testing positive long after beating the disease do not shed contagious virus. It is inert.
With the caveat that "those tested positive again" did not imply they get *infected* again, nor would we know if things may change after a few more months, e.g. immunity may only last 6 months, or it could be that the immunity is not 100%, i.e. they could be more resistant but not completely immune.
Only by clinically testing the vaccine along with deliberate attempt to infect the vaccinated volunteers can we know if the vaccine is useful or not. Even then, no one can say how long the immunity would last without trying to infect them again after months passed.
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The evidence so far indicates that you stay immune for at least a couple of months. *Something* is causing the virus particles being shed after testing clear to be inactive. With any luck the immunity will last a year or two.
Also, it appears that if become susceptible to infection again, the second case will be milder rather than more deadly. This isn't unexpected, but it sure wasn't a certainty.
OTOH. That the particles are being shed may indicate that there's a reservoir of active virus that the immune
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Trump needs to be seen doing something. The viability of the vaccine will be determined after the next elections, and that is good enough for Trump. He probably does not care whether it works or not.
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He's been doing something all along. Twisting Ukraine's aid from the U.S. to aid his re-election with trumped up charges against Biden, which is unconstitutional except for the Senate Invertebrates. Lately he's attempting to hold down voting by threatening funding to states who want to expand mail-in-voting. Every dictator wannabee hates the idea of people freely voting. And to cap it off, he's firing the only adult supervision of his alleged administration by firing the IGs and replacing them with potted p
Re:Fuck it (Score:5, Insightful)
You left off a key part of the quote - "against the coronavirus".
Yeah, we haven't proved that the vaccine(s) being developed are effective. That's the point of clinical trials and all the related things we do to certify a new pharmaceutical.
It's also why developing new drugs is expensive as hell. You can spend a lot of money, only to find that your new drug (vaccine, whatever) causes more problems than it solves. And then you have to start all over again, after having effectively thrown a billion or so dollars into a bonfire....
So, we do what we did here - we toss some money at the problem, and hope that we didn't just waste the money. Personally, I'd be in favor of us doing the same thing for EVERY program to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus. By a major pharmaceutical company, anyway. I wouldn't want the government to toss ME a billion just because I said I was working on a vaccine (well, I wouldn't say "no" to a billion tossed my way, but no way I could spend the money to develop a vaccine)...
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The problem is, this looks like picking the winner before the horse race. You're quite likely to be wrong. In this case that means you should spread your bets, not plunk the entire bundle on one that you like the name of.
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I'd guess that most countries that can afford to and have universities and/or companies capable of researching vaccines are throwing money at helping development. I believe I heard that here in Canada, the government has earmarked $150 million for vaccine research.
OK, I mis-remembered, $115 million for vaccines research, with $662 billion for research on how the virus acts as well as clinical trials and $350 billion for testing and such according to https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/... [ctvnews.ca]
Re:Lonely girl (Score:4, Funny)
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I'd rather expect to find a source of infection there.
Re:Lonely girl (Score:4, Insightful)
Only men 18 years older.
How do I know I'm exactly 18 years older if I don't know how old you are?
Re:Fake News (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fake News (Score:4, Informative)
There is a lot in those two sentences that the reporter probably didn't understand and mixed up topics.
At this time, we don't know if the COVID-19 behaves like the flu family or smallpox. Both have vaccines but only the latter can achieve "herd immunity". The former mutates quickly and every season you get a new set of strains that you need to get a new shot for. By the time you get herd immunity, its already mutated into something new that the herd is no longer immune. So could COVID-19 and then this vaccine would be useful in killing off the original strain but we need a new one for the new strain.
The other part of this is that the vaccine itself may not work or the immunity's lifetime is too short. It hasn't gone through enough testing. But this investment of capital will really help speed that up. Kudos to the administration for finally doing something. But we need to keep in mind that like all investments, it may not pan out. If it doesn't, then we should just move on to the next viable option rather than waste time debating the decision.
And COVID-19 appears to be leaning toward smallpox-like because we should have had atleast one new viable strain by now.
Re: (Score:2)
For that matter, we don't know if a mutation to COVID-19 would still pose a significant health risk to people. Most coronaviruses aren't.
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I agree with the gist of everything you are saying. I would keep in mind that even partial immunity gained from previous exposure or an imperfect vaccine might greatly reduce human suffering and the death toll. One can hope.
As for the expectation that we would have one or more new strains by now, that makes sense; but I would be cautious there, because a virus that is already so effective at spreading is not easily competed with by its own variants.
Re: (Score:2)
$1,200,000,000 / 300,000 == $4,000 / dose.for those that failed 3 grade math.
I know you silly Americans are used to paying through the nose for drugs so $4000 a dose wouldn't seem strange but you're several orders of magnitude out. It's $4, yes that's right FOUR DOLLARS a dose as it's for 300 MILLION people. Welcome to how the rest of the first world funds healthcare.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. But my private health insurance will still fight me on that.
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Are they developing a vaccine or a 12 year old Counterstrike player?