Coronavirus Updates

[Cristiano]

Why Moderna's Vaccine Announcement Has Experts So Enthusiastic

It’s interim data and needs more review, but experts say the results reinforce last week’s encouraging findings from a similar Pfizer vaccine.

www.huffpost.com

 

[danielravennest]

Why Moderna's Vaccine Announcement Has Experts So Enthusiastic

It’s interim data and needs more review, but experts say the results reinforce last week’s encouraging findings from a similar Pfizer vaccine.

www.huffpost.com

The different effectiveness numbers seem to be accounted for by slight differences in how they measure virus cases after innoculation. Pfizer started counting cases after 10 days, while Moderna counted them after 14 days. The days are needed for the body to react to the injection of mRNA, which in turn produces bits of viral protein, which the body then develops antibodies to. The antibodies latch onto the real virus, which your immune system then attacks.

(I'm an engineer, not a virologist, hopefully this is correct)

If the numbers hold up, this seems to indicate waiting a bit longer with either vaccine before going about normal activities.

Both numbers involve fairly small numbers of cases, about 100, after giving around 30,000 people either the vaccine or a placebo. That's a fairly small sample, and I'm not sure how the statistical error works in this case. I expect the effectiveness number to change somewhat after millions are vaccinated and we have a much larger sample to work with.

The Moderna vaccine only has to be refrigerated at 25F, reachable by household freezers, and is viable for 30 days. This would be much easier to distribute.

(My own refrigerator hovers just below freezing on average in the main section because I'm single and don't use up the food fast enough. It cycles a bit above during defrost cycles. If I cranked it to the coldest setting it could probably reach 25F.)

 

[Essence Lumin]

The Moderna vaccine only has to be refrigerated at 25F, reachable by household freezers, and is viable for 30 days. This would be much easier to distribute.

Home freezers are supposed to be around 0F.

 

[Beebo Brink]

And this was exactly the point of trying to flatten the curve. Fight off getting infected until we have an effective vaccine. Instead, anti-maskers are acting as if they are being asked (or forced) to do this for the rest of their lives. ONE YEAR. One year is all it would have taken.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

And we could have just about wiped out the common cold, measles, and multiple flu strains while we were at it.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Honestly, I think a lot more folks are going to keep wearing masks after this, at least for a while longer.

I mean, sure, it was ordered as a preventitive, but I don't forget that, there have been a few years where the flu vaccine wasn't for the one that ended up going around. And hey, as it gets cooler, its a nice way to keep my nose and lungs from getting too cold. [I have issues breathing in cold, wet air....]

 

[Sovereignty]

 

[danielravennest]

Home freezers are supposed to be around 0F.

Correct. What I don't know is if the Moderna vaccine needs to be below 25F or *at* 25F. But in any case 25F is easily reached with conventional refrigerator/freezers, so it should not be a challenge for the refrigerators that pharmacies have for storing drugs that need refrigeration.

 

[danielravennest]

Honestly, I think a lot more folks are going to keep wearing masks after this, at least for a while longer.

I'm gonna start referring to the Trumpites as "redshirts". Like the security team on Star Trek, you know they are going to die. Also their political party is red on the maps. Because of the redshirts, and the fact that 95% effective vaccine still has 5% failure rates, I will also keep wearing a mask for some time. And if one of those redshirts asks me why, I will say "Fake Vaccine"

 

[Ghost Pepper]

I wonder how much of the population won't take the vaccine?

 

[Sean Gorham]

Redshirts were good guys.

 

[Essence Lumin]

This is a lengthy article from the New York Times about the history of the N95 mask supply this year and the shockingly bad way it had been handled by this administration.

Inside the Chaotic, Cutthroat Gray Market for N95 Masks (Published 2020)

As the country heads into a dangerous new phase of the pandemic, the government’s management of the P.P.E. crisis has left the private sector still straining to meet anticipated demand.

www.nytimes.com

Evernote link

 

[Beebo Brink]

Redshirts were good dead guys.

Fixed it for you.

 

[Beebo Brink]

I wonder how much of the population won't take the vaccine?

I'm guessing at least 40-45% will refuse because of a mix of COVID-hoaxers, anti-vaxxers, people who just don't trust any vaccine developed during the time of the Trump administration, and people who are waiting to see if it's safe when rolled out to the population at large.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Fixed it for you.

eta: Red shirts include operations in Starfleet. That covers a number of departments. Scotty is Engineering. Uhura is Communications and Linguistics (which could get her a blue shirt for Science and Medical). Most of the disposable Red Shirts are Security, which would be the crew members most likely to be sent on dangerous away missions.

 

[Free]

What Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine results mean for ending the pandemic

Moderna says its vaccine is 95 percent effective. Here’s what you need to know.

www.vox.com

The announcements also mean that the world will likely have more than one highly effective vaccine for Covid-19, and the end of the pandemic could be on the horizon. High efficacy also means that fewer people would need to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity, the threshold at which the virus can no longer spread easily from person to person.

However, there are some caveats: The results are preliminary, the vaccine requires two doses, there are some side effects, the clinical trial isn’t complete, and the findings were announced in a press release instead of a peer-reviewed paper. Moderna did not respond to requests for comment.

And while demonstrating high efficacy is important, the road to getting millions of people vaccinated is fraught with logistical challenges. While this is an important result, a lot of difficult work on a Covid-19 vaccine still lies ahead.

 

[Free]

Pfizer to seek approval from FDA 'within days' after further analysis finds COVID-19 vaccine 95% effective

Pfizer and BioNTech are expected to produce up to 50 million doses globally in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.

www.usatoday.com

Pfizer and its collaborator BioNTech announced early Wednesday it plans to start the Food and Drug Administration approval process “within days” for its candidate vaccine, BNT162b2, after further analysis showed it’s 95% effective.

Newly released data found the candidate vaccine prevented 95% of infections from the virus that causes COVID-19 after evaluating 170 people who were infected, 162 of which took the placebo, the company said in a news release.

 

[Sean Gorham]

Since now we're talking about redshirts:

Amazon.com: Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas (Hugo Award Winner - Best Novel) eBook: Scalzi, John: Kindle Store

 

[Soen Eber]

I wonder how much of the population won't take the vaccine?

I've read around half. If we can get the R Value consistently below 1.0 and step up on contract tracing it may not matter.

 

[danielravennest]

I've read around half. If we can get the R Value consistently below 1.0 and step up on contract tracing it may not matter.

It may go higher if schools and employers start requiring it. Schools for the obvious reason, and they already require other vaccines, so not a new thing. Employers because their health insurance coverage will offer lower rates if they do. 95% less expensive hospital stays is a powerful incentive.