Coronavirus.. outlook

[aridbud]

I have to know....
are the burgers there really that good?!

No. Better than McD's or Burger King, Wendy's, but the bar is low to begin with; it's just a new fad, new chain. Lines were around the block when Crispy Creme came to towns.

I prefer to eat at local establishments. Chains get most of the $, while the state gets 16% (at least our state) in revenue. Local joints keep 100%, aside from taxes. Added plus, local tastes better.

BINGO BURGER in Pueblo, and expanding, they resource local ingredients.

 

[mexcurandero420]

'Vaccination is mandatory for air travel'

You will only be able to travel by air if you have been vaccinated against the corona virus. So says Alan Joyce, CEO of the Australian airline Qantas. “We are looking at changes to our conditions. International travelers will need to have a vaccination if they want to board. We think that is necessary. ”

Joyce does not think anti-taxxers can turn to a competitor of Qantas. “Based on my discussions with other airlines in the rest of the world, I think that obligation will apply everywhere.”

Last week there was talk in the House of Representatives about an indirect vaccination obligation. Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Health) and a majority of the House of Representatives are against this. The VVD feels a bit like ' indirect coercion '. “I am prepared to make it an indirect vaccination obligation. That if you don't get vaccinated, it will have consequences, ”said VVD MP Hayke Veldman.

 

[Amynamous]

It's up to you what you want to believe. However the fact covid has a 99.4% survival rate is not in question.

Be careful what you wish for.

British Government to hand out "Freedom Pass" to those who test negative for COVID-19 at least twice a week

Facts are verifiable. Can you verify that covid has a “survival rate” of 99.4%?

 

[Medfinder]

Coronavirus Cases:
59,723,136
view by country
Deaths:
1,405,580
Recovered:
41,315,940
ACTIVE CASES
17,001,616
Currently Infected Patients
16,897,987 (99.4%)
in Mild Condition

103,629 (0.6%)
Serious or Critical


CLOSED CASES
42,721,520
Cases which had an outcome:
41,315,940 (97%)
Recovered / Discharged

1,405,580 (3%)
Deaths

 

[Medfinder]

Facts are verifiable. Can you verify that covid has a “survival rate” of 99.4%?

here is some recent data...

https://www.aafp.org/journals/afp/content/covid-briefs.html

 

[mexcurandero420]

3,979 new cases and 90 new deaths in the Netherlands today.

 

[Im'One]

Its been discussed before...discharged and recovered are not the same thing...
Oklahoma has been running at 3500 new cases per day With a total state population of three million. ICU beds are full, people are now dying waiting for a bed..of course we have beds, but no staff for all of them.
A protests of parents wanting more control of virtual schools showed up at the capitol. An MD has announced he will run against Governor Stitforbrains in the next primary.

 

[mexcurandero420]

4,947 new cases and 74 new deaths in the Netherlands today.

 

[Medfinder]

Coronavirus Cases:
60,265,178
view by country
Deaths:
1,418,219
Recovered:
41,694,402
ACTIVE CASES
17,152,557
Currently Infected Patients
17,049,004 (99.4%)
in Mild Condition

103,553 (0.6%)
Serious or Critical


CLOSED CASES
43,112,621
Cases which had an outcome:
41,694,402 (97%)
Recovered / Discharged

1,418,219 (3%)
Deaths

 

[mexcurandero420]

The AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine Data Isn't Up to Snuff

There's been even more good news this week, this time from the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials. But a closer look reveals some very shaky science.

The makers of a third coronavirus vaccine announced positive results in clinical trials on Monday, setting off yet another round of excited news reports. This one, produced by a partnership between a University of Oxford research institute, its spinout company Vaccitech, and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, does not need to be stored at freezing temperatures and would be cheaper and easier to produce than the high-efficacy vaccines produced by BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna. Indeed, according to an initial write-up in The New York Times, Oxford-AstraZeneca’s is “expected to be relied upon heavily across the globe, to help curb a pandemic that has killed more than 1.3 million people.

Sounds like great news, right? Monday’s press release from AstraZeneca presents “convincing evidence that [the vaccine] works,” said Science. But not everyone has been convinced. The price of AstraZeneca’s shares actually dropped on the news, and an analysis from an investment bank concluded, “We believe that this product will never be licensed in the US.” Over at STAT News, Anthony Fauci cautioned that we’ll need to see more data before coming to a conclusion. The skeptics have strong reasons to be concerned: This week’s “promising” results are nothing like the others that we’ve been hearing about in November—and the claims that have been drawn from them are based on very shaky science.


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HILDA BASTIAN11.25.20 8:00 AM
IDEAS
The AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine Data Isn't Up to Snuff
There's been even more good news this week, this time from the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials. But a closer look reveals some very shaky science.
collage of images of a vaccine syringe, Anthony Fauci, the Oxford logo, and man's hand holding up red flag
PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES
The makers of a third coronavirus vaccine announced positive results in clinical trials on Monday, setting off yet another round of excited news reports. This one, produced by a partnership between a University of Oxford research institute, its spinout company Vaccitech, and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, does not need to be stored at freezing temperatures and would be cheaper and easier to produce than the high-efficacy vaccines produced by BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna. Indeed, according to an initial write-up in The New York Times, Oxford-AstraZeneca’s is “expected to be relied upon heavily across the globe, to help curb a pandemic that has killed more than 1.3 million people.”

Sounds like great news, right? Monday’s press release from AstraZeneca presents “convincing evidence that [the vaccine] works,” said Science. But not everyone has been convinced. The price of AstraZeneca’s shares actually dropped on the news, and an analysis from an investment bank concluded, “We believe that this product will never be licensed in the US.” Over at STAT News, Anthony Fauci cautioned that we’ll need to see more data before coming to a conclusion. The skeptics have strong reasons to be concerned: This week’s “promising” results are nothing like the others that we’ve been hearing about in November—and the claims that have been drawn from them are based on very shaky science.


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The problems start with the fact that Monday’s announcement did not present results from a single, large-scale, Phase 3 clinical trial, as was the case for earlier bulletins about the BNT-Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Instead, Oxford-AstraZeneca’s data came out of two separate studies: one in the UK that began in May, and another in Brazil, which got started at the end of June. These two studies were substantially different from one another: They didn’t have standardized dosing schemes across the trials, for one thing, nor did they provide the same “control” injections to volunteers who were not getting the experimental Covid vaccine. The fact that they may have had to combine data from two trials in order to get a strong enough result raises the first red flag.

Consider that leading vaccine makers—including AstraZeneca—issued a scientific-rigor-and-integrity pledge back in September, in which they promised to submit their products for approval or emergency use authorization only “after demonstrating safety and efficacy through a Phase 3 clinical study that is designed and conducted to meet requirements of expert regulatory authorities such as FDA.” Note the wording here: These companies did not suggest that they might claim to have demonstrated efficacy through multiple, distinct clinical studies, combined together to get enough data. They said they would use a Phase 3 study—as in, one big one. Yet AstraZeneca has already applied on the basis of this data for approval in Canada, and has plans to do the same in Britain, Europe and Brazil. The company also says it will use the data to apply for emergency use authorization in the US.

The Food and Drug Administration’s guidance for Covid-19 vaccines does allow for emergency use authorization based on interim analyses, but the same document says this must be supported by a minimum level of vaccine efficacy “for a placebo-controlled efficacy trial.” Again: it refers to a trial. That is exactly what BNT-Pfizer and Moderna did. Both released the FDA-approved blueprints for their trials—called trial protocols—weeks ahead of time, with details of the calculations and statistical rules that they’d use to determine when to perform an interim analysis and how much certainty could be attached to those results. When BNT-Pfizer’s discussions with the FDA led to changes in this plan, BNT-Pfizer explained why, and released an updated protocol. That’s scientific rigor, and it matters a lot. When a vaccine-maker specifies the rules of the game before the results start coming in, we can check their work and be confident in what they tell us at the end. We can make sure they haven’t cherry-picked the data.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca story is very different, though. Presumably, neither of the two trials from which they combined data could have provided a clear answer on the vaccine’s efficacy on its own. To make things worse, Oxford-AstraZeneca reported only the results for certain subgroups of people within each one. (For perspective on this: The two subgroups chosen leave out perhaps half the people in the Brazilian trial.) Meanwhile, one of their key claims is that giving half a dose of the vaccine on the first injection, followed by a standard dose on the second one, led to better outcomes—but neither of these trials had been designed to test this hypothesis. In fact, it’s since emerged that the half-dose/full-dose option started out as a mistake, and one that was only caught when some people in the study didn’t have the usual high rate of adverse effects.

There were other dosing issues, too, that haven’t been explained even though dosing is the centerpiece of the press release. There are many different regimens in these trials—the UK study has more than two dozen arms, meaning the volunteers were divided into that many groups according to age and how much of the vaccine would be administered and when. The doses are measured by the number of altered viral particles they contain, and the developers decided that the standard dose would be 5 x 1010 viral particles. But for many of those arms in the UK trial—as well as everyone who got the vaccine in the Brazilian trial—publicly available trial information shows that the standard dose could be between 3.5 and 6.5 ×?1010 viral particles. The lower end of that range isn’t far off from a half-dose.

How did Oxford-AstraZeneca end up with this patched-together analysis instead of data from a single, large trial? After all, this vaccine went into Phase 3 testing before either BNT-PFizer’s or Moderna’s did. But in the UK, where that testing started, the Covid-19 outbreak happened to be receding. That meant results would be coming in very slowly.

A month later, a second Phase 3 trial for the vaccine started in Brazil. That one was for healthcare workers, for whom the risk of being exposed to Covid was far higher than it was for the people in the UK trial. But the two trials had other substantive differences. In the UK, for example, the volunteers who did not get the experimental Covid vaccine were injected with meningococcal vaccine; in Brazil, those in the comparison group were given a saline injection as a placebo.

Meanwhile, BNT-Pfizer and Moderna began Phase 3 trials for their coronavirus vaccines on the same day in July: Both planned to include 30,000 volunteers at the time, and both trial plans were approved by the FDA. Oxford-AstraZeneca then announced they, too, would run a 30,000-person trial in the US.

But that research on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine quickly fell behind the others’. The US trial was approved by the FDA, but it didn’t start recruiting people until the end of August; and just a week later, it was put on hold so the FDA could investigate a serious adverse event in the UK trial. It wasn’t clear what caused the volunteer to get sick, but the FDA did not give the all-clear for Oxford-AstraZeneca’s US trial to resume until Oct. 23. By then the protocol for the trial had been publicly released. It says the plan is to inject the vaccine in two standard doses, a month apart; and two people will be vaccinated for every one who gets a placebo saline injection.

So here we are at the end of November. BNT-Pfizer and Moderna have offered up a masterclass in how to do major vaccine trials quickly in a pandemic, while Oxford-AstraZeneca has, for the moment, only an assortment of smaller ones ready to look at.

But wait, more red flags! Last week, Oxford-AstraZeneca published some results from earlier in the development of the UK trial. That paper included a trial protocol for the UK study, attached as an appendix. Deep in that document, and apparently overlooked by reporters and commentators, was an eyebrow-raising suggestion: Under a section marked “Interim and primary analyses of the primary outcome,” the trialists outline a plan to combine and analyze data from four clinical trials (only half of which are Phase 3), carried out in different ways on three different continents. The plan, they wrote, was to pull out results only for the people across these four trials who had gotten "two standard-dose vaccines," and then pool those together for what's called a meta-analysis.

The appendix doesn’t say when this became the plan. We don’t even know if the Oxford-AstraZeneca team followed it. In fact, it’s impossible to know, at this point, just how many analyses these researchers have run, and on which data. That’s a scientific red flag with flashing lights. (Again it’s useful to compare this work to the BNT-Pfizer and Moderna trials, where the analyses were clearly spelled out ahead of time for everyone to see.) All we know for sure is that on Monday, Oxford-AstraZeneca announced results of a different interim analysis that included only volunteers from the two trials in the UK and Brazil. As we’ve seen, this analysis was not limited to the people who got two standard doses of the vaccine.

There are other problems, too. In the press release, Oxford-AstraZeneca reports that two of the dosing regimens “demonstrated efficacy.” Presumably, none of the others did, but they didn’t give specifics. Of the only two regimens they reported, one (the mistaken first half-dose, followed by a full dose at least a month later) came in at 90 percent, and the other (two standard doses at least a month apart) achieved only 62 percent efficacy. You’ll see reports that the vaccine had 70 percent efficacy, on average; but that’s un-knowable, because we only have numbers on these two regimens, as opposed to everyone in the trials—and how they arrived at those percentages isn’t explained. As far as we know, some of this analysis could hinge on data from just a few sick people. That means the findings could be a coincidence, or they could be biased by other factors. For example, it has since been revealed that the people who received an initial half-dose—and for whom the vaccine was said to have 90-percent efficacy—included no one over the age of 55. That was not the case for the standard-dosing group, however, where the reported efficacy was 62 percent. This demographic difference could be more important than the change to the size of the first dose.

That’s not the end of the problems. Overall, the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials appear to include relatively few participants over the age of 55, even though this group is especially vulnerable to Covid-19. (People over 55 were not originally eligible to join the Brazilian trial at all.) Compare that to BNT-Pfizer’s trial, where 41 percent of the volunteers were over 55. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine also seems to produce relatively high rates of adverse events. If you want to dig further into this vaccine’s story and issues, I’ve laid out a more detailed rundown of the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials and sources here.

Now it’s over to drug regulatory agencies around the world. They have to make a decision about this vaccine that was once ahead of the pack, but for which there are still no reliable and rigorous results from a single, large phase 3 trial. If anything short of that standard is accepted for this vaccine, it will be easy to stoke already widespread fears about corners being cut. A loss of trust would affect more than this one vaccine.

Article from wired.com

 

[mexcurandero420]

4,506 new cases and 75 new deaths in the Netherlands today.

 

[Medfinder]

Coronavirus Cases:
60,894,187
view by country
Deaths:
1,430,245
Recovered:
42,183,944
ACTIVE CASES
17,279,998
Currently Infected Patients
17,175,421 (99.4%)
in Mild Condition

104,577 (0.6%)
Serious or Critical

CLOSED CASES
43,614,189
Cases which had an outcome:
42,183,944 (97%)
Recovered / Discharged

1,430,245 (3%)
Deaths

 

[BadTicket]

Yep, back to closing stuff and limiting access and thing here in Western Siberia too. Covid cases are up, deaths too, but not bad compared to rest of Euroland. Damn shit kinda sucks but whatchu gonna do, dude jack, when the virus runs wild on you, brother?!

Say your prayers, take your vitamins, and you will never go wrong!
- HH

Stay safe out there, Hulkamaniacs!

 

[zachrockbadenof]

Sounds like great news, right? Monday’s press release from AstraZeneca presents “convincing evidence that [the vaccine] works,” said Science. But not everyone has been convinced. The price of AstraZeneca’s shares actually dropped on the news
Article from wired.com

the stock price is meaningless - all these companies are more or less giving (or will be giving ) the vaccine away... they ain't making $$$ on this...

 

[mexcurandero420]

Secret ingredients behind the breakthrough Covid vaccines

Moderna and BioNTech-Pfizer’s shots use same mRNA technology but with key differences

Two breakthrough vaccines that use the same revolutionary technology have been shown to be highly effective in preventing Covid-19, but differences in the way the shots are designed affect how quickly production can be increased and how they are distributed.

The vaccines — one produced by US company Moderna and the other through a partnership between Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech — both recorded efficacy rates higher than 94 per cent in clinical trials, raising global hopes they can provide a route out of the pandemic.

At the heart of both shots is a strand of messenger ribonucleic acid or mRNA — a sequence of around 2,000 biochemical letters of genetic code that carry instructions to the recipient’s immune system to recognise and fight coronavirus infection. The technology has never been used in a vaccine before.

Moderna’s vaccine uses 100 micrograms of RNA per dose, while Pfizer-BioNTech’s shot uses only 30 micrograms making it easier to produce and less expensive, explained Zoltán Kis, a researcher at Imperial College London’s Future Vaccine Manufacturing Hub.

That should enable Pfizer-BioNTech to increase production of their vaccine more quickly than their US competitor. Immunologists added that it was not yet clear why Moderna’s shot needed the larger dose of RNA.

“It is notoriously difficult for outsiders to find out exactly what’s inside a vaccine,” said Alexander Edwards, associate professor of biomedical technology at Reading university. “But how it is put together can have a big effect on how it works.” Although the RNA in each is essentially the same, there may be tiny differences in the genetic sequence which make Pfizer-BioNTech more effective at smaller doses.

“The RNA for mRNA vaccines is produced by a chemical process rather than the biological processes used to produce other vaccines, which involve growing cell cultures,” said Prof Edwards. It is altered slightly from the “wild type” RNA naturally present in the virus, to make it more stable and more easily read by human cells, he said.

In both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines the RNA is encapsulated in “lipid nanoparticles”. These microscopic droplets of oily liquid — about 0.1 micron in diameter — enclose and protect the fragile genetic instructions as they are manufactured, transported and finally injected into people. The composition of the lipid nanoparticles is slightly different in the two vaccines, scientists said, with a number of implications.

“These nanoparticles can give a magic kick to the formulation,” said Prof Edwards. “You might have a list of ingredients but you don’t know how they are combined to produce particles with the best size and shape. There are strong parallels with food production — you may know the ingredients for Heinz Ketchup but you can’t make it.”

Pfizer and BioNTech obtain their nanoparticles from Acuitas, a specialist Canadian company, while Moderna has developed its own lipid technology.

“The art and challenge of developing nanoparticles is to combine lipids with different physical characteristics in a way that stabilises the RNA as effectively as possible,” said Mike Watson, a former head of vaccines at Moderna.

In both cases, cold storage is needed to keep the nanoparticles in good shape and to stop the mRNA degrading. But while Moderna’s vaccine is stable enough to survive storage for six months at -20C, the temperature of a standard domestic or medical freezer, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine needs to be stored and transported at -70C.

Video: Anthony Fauci speaks to FT about coronavirus vaccine result
As a result, once approved by the regulatory authorities, Moderna’s vaccine can be distributed “more easily and at lower cost”, said Imperial’s Dr Kis.

Pfizer and BioNTech have had to design special “thermal shippers” that can maintain the product for up to 15 days at that temperature when regularly refilled with dry ice. Each package has a thermometer linked to GPS, which tracks its temperature and location across Pfizer’s distribution network. Even so, the temperature requirement will make it harder to distribute the vaccine in countries without sufficient cold chain storage capacity like many in Africa and Asia.

In contrast, adenovirus vaccines under development such as the one produced by Oxford university and AstraZeneca, can be stored for many months without freezing. Rather than using mRNA, the Oxford vaccine attaches the coronavirus spike protein genes used to provoke the immune response to a harmless adenovirus, which carries them into human cells. Sarah Gilbert, a leader of the Oxford team, said its vaccine was stable at ordinary fridge temperatures of between 2C-8C.

Differences in the way Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s lipids are formulated are also likely to affect the way each shot works. “The lipid nanoparticles have some adjuvant activity, providing a little inflammation with the vaccination that helps the immune system to make antibodies and T-cells that target the Sars-Cov-2 virus,” said Brian Ferguson, an immunology researcher at Cambridge university.

Another approach, under development by Imperial College and in early clinical testing, is a self-amplifying RNA vaccine which makes more copies of itself after injection into human cells. That approach could ultimately reduce the amount of RNA needed to as little as 1 microgram per dose, Dr Kis said.

Financial Times

 

[zachrockbadenof]

lets hope that 1 or more of the vaccines work .... then we can ship the virus back where it came from the FUCKING chinese...

 

[mr.brunch]

Hopefully the vaccines are good...
Still, judging by the rate of testing it’s going to take ages to vaccinate everyone

 

[Switcher56]

Hopefully the vaccines are good...
Still, judging by the rate of testing it’s going to take ages to vaccinate everyone

Bingo! Give that man a prize. Some fire OG perhaps...

 

[mexcurandero420]

5,790 new cases and 83 new deaths in the Netherlands today.

 

[Medfinder]

Coronavirus Cases:
61,503,706
view by country
Deaths:
1,441,212
Recovered:
42,553,243
ACTIVE CASES
17,509,251
Currently Infected Patients
17,404,236 (99.4%)
in Mild Condition

105,015 (0.6%)
Serious or Critical
CLOSED CASES
43,994,455
Cases which had an outcome:
42,553,243 (97%)
Recovered / Discharged

1,441,212 (3%)
Deaths