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[Dostoevsky]

Huh, the latest vaccine news isn't here yet?

Well, for those who haven't seen it yet the interim data from a late-stage trial suggests that Moderna's entry is roughly 94% effective.

Unlike the Pfizer effort, this one can be stored at normal fridge temperatures, but (like the Pfizer vaccine, if I recall) does require two shots.

Moderna expects to have enough safety data required for U.S. authorization in the next week or so and expects to file for emergency use authorization (EUA) in the coming weeks.

All that said, keep in mind that the N values for these experiments are relatively low, and (of course) we don't really know about potential long-term effects or other issues - just a bit on short-term side effects:

Most side effects were mild to moderate. A significant proportion of volunteers, however, experienced more severe aches and pains after taking the second dose, including about 10% who had fatigue severe enough to interfere with daily activities while another 9% had severe body aches. Most of these complaints were generally short-lived, Moderna said.

[misko27]

They said it wouldn't be ready until April at the earliest, so still another... 5 months, almost six, minimum.

[Dostoevsky]

And the two shots need to be about a month apart, so I can guarantee you people will get the first shot then figure they're good to go.

It's also unclear how much the vaccine will affect transmission, which may well become an issue with the staggered rollout that'll be (necessarily, thanks to stock limitations) happening.

[Starver]

Apparently a fairly common adverse effect across all candidates is "pain at the injection site"....

(Well, yes. But won't stop those opposed to the vaccines from claiming a high adverse effect rate from including this in their figures...)

[Naturegirl1999]

What needle doesn’t cause pain at injection other than anesthetics? Of course a needle is going to cause pain, it’s a needle

[bloop_bleep]

Might mean prolonged pain at the injection site even after the needle is removed.

[Grim Portent]

What needle doesn’t cause pain at injection other than anesthetics? Of course a needle is going to cause pain, it’s a needle

I expect they mean lingering pain over the days and weeks following the shot. Sometimes that's normal, sometimes it's not depending on what was injected, how much and where.

[Starver]

What I read did not tend to elaborate. But I've seen enough "75% of those trialled suffered adverse effects!" and, so far as I can see, they do the same sort of thing as the "all but 6% of Covid deaths mentioned something else, so none of them actually died of Covid" mis-thinking.
 
I'm sure there are better lists than this, BTW, but by my reckoning we've got the following on the go as serious contenders.

Phase 3+...
BioNTech (Pfizer) - mRNA (temporary new building instructions) - ahead of the field
Gamalaya (Russia's "Sputnik V") - Non-replicating virus (impotent bad-guy) - announced suspiciously early, approval followed on the heals of Pfizer. If I were a cynic, I'd be wondering how much of the 'work' put into this was actually taken from one or more of the various computer hacks that have been reported on Western researchers. Doesn't mean it's a bad product, though.
Moderna - mRNA - apparently far enough along to be pre-purchased in bulk by the UK government..? (Didn't have them this high in my list until today, but I've probably not been paying enough attention.)

Phase 3...
Beijing/CanSinoBIO - Modified surrogate virus (low-nastiness virus made t look like the bad one) - not much information
Beijing/Sinopharm - Inactivated virus - given early 'emergency use' in a couple of middle-eastern countries
Janssen - Non-replicating virus - Paused for a severe reaction
Oxford/AstraZeneca - Modified surrogate virus - Was paused for a single severe reaction, but back on track
Sinovac - Inactivated virus - Trials paused after a ?non-clinical? death, but resumed

Phase 2...
CureVac - mRNA
Novovax - Direct Proteins? (I think they're just injecting the bare protein spikes)

Phase 1+...
AnGes - DNA (plasmid rings shuttled deep into host-cells)
Arcturus - mRNA
Chinese Academy of Med. Sci. - Inactivate virus
Inovio - DNA (plasmid rings)

Phase 1...
Genexine - DNA
GlaxoSmithKline - Virus-like particles
GlaxoSmithKline - Spike proteins
Imperial Colleage London - mRNA
Shenzen Institute - A couple of different versions of Viral modification of vaccinee DNA? (Sounds heavy-handed.)
Vaxine - Proteins
China(/PLA Academy) - mRNA


(Had to copy this in from a lot of random info I have on a well scribbled-on/over-scribbled scrap of paper. Errors may abound, and out-of-datedness might be the order of the day. With any luck.)

[Reelya]

Boris Johnson, who was hospitalised with Covid earlier in the year, is now officially isolating in 10 Downing Street(ish) after meeting an MP who has subsequently tested positive and thus triggered an alert to him through the UK's much vaunted/derided Covid App.

I was listening to a podcast which outlined Boris' career. I was not aware how much of a phony he is.

He got his big break by writing spurious anti-EU articles such as about how they were banning bendy bananas and stuff and would have banana police checking the curvature. I'm pretty sure Boris treated Brexit the same - tilting at windmills to make himself popular. The problem is that if you actually topple the windmill then you lose your shtick, as happened to him when he outright admitted he had literally no post-Brexit plan. A guy for whom his whole literal stage act is railing against the EU doesn't have anything to say once you actually leave the EU.

So this is shit. You guys have the bendy-banana shock jock running the country during the century's worst pandemic.

[scriver]

Those aren't phony at all. The EU literally do.

Sweden for example aren't allowed to export any apples to other EU countries because "the peels have spots on them". Because we don't constantly soak our orchards in insecticide so insects leave perfectly harmless marks on the skin at a minority of the fruit. And the frail little Germans have mental breakdowns at seeing such imperfection in their grocery stores or something so the sale of them must be completely banned.

[wierd]

Does the EU want to end up like the US, with epic asstons of food waste?

Because this is how the EU ends up like the US, with epic asstons of food waste.

[scriver]

Yes, it does. Both internally and things we refuse to import because "It's not bendy enough" or "It's too bendy".

And if it's internal the EU-government buys it all up and dumps it in Africa, dumping the food prices there and making it impossible for African farmers to make a living, so they're forced to sell their land to European agro-corporations.

[Starver]

Not wanting to make this a Brexit thread (Boris wasn't even firmly Leave, but effectively flipped a coin as to which stance to take) or even wider EuroPol, the "bendy-banana" thing is often accused of being what it isn't (unintentional effects aside, but then life's complex). A good thing to look up[1] is "Boris Kipper", for an indication of his integrity on that issue when you'd have thought he could have chosen to illustrate something that was actually based on reality.

Threadwise, whether it's him or someone else (possibly Cummins&Co, who have since left as I mentioned in passing) it wasn't very long after he was still poo-pooing the very idea of a national re-lockdown[2] that he then had England back in this re-lockdown. Agility of response based on incoming data is a good quality, and maybe he knew ahead of time but had to stop everyone from panicing[3], but it doesn't look good. Everything seems to be far too harsh and not precautionary enough. Not to different people, maybe a sign of a good median approach that shares around the necessary pain,, but often simultaneously to the same person, which indicates a 'bad median'.  It's a running joke that if Nicola Sturgeon keeps on deciding exactly the opposite for Scotland, she'll not go far wrong.


Speaking of which, there was (last night, haven't checked this morning yet) a suggestion that a Tier-4 regional lockdown might be applied to some areas of Scotland. (Yes, I know this means the current approach wasn't enough, but at least her language tends to use the term "we hope", before forced to adapt to circumstances, rather than peppered with "we will" on everything it turns out he later won't and can't.)

I must check on Wales and NI situations, while I remember... But whether it's worth a further comment I don't really know yet.






[1] It's headed up, in my search just now, with articles by the Grauniad, BBC, etc, which will get some peoples' hackles up for different reasons.

[2]

England (effectively) is saying it is ruling out a national lockdown in favour of localised targetting, however.

[3] Not supported by the tendency to say "this is urgent, so it will start a week on Thursday" ...giving you all plenty of time to plan your last-gasp visits to all the pubs you know and love.

[Reelya]

Those aren't phony at all. The EU literally do.

Sweden for example aren't allowed to export any apples to other EU countries because "the peels have spots on them". Because we don't constantly soak our orchards in insecticide so insects leave perfectly harmless marks on the skin at a minority of the fruit. And the frail little Germans have mental breakdowns at seeing such imperfection in their grocery stores or something so the sale of them must be completely banned.

Where Boris lied was that he said the legislation in question banned 'bendy' bananas. Nothing was actually banned. You just couldn't sell wonky-looking bananas and claim they were top grade. The proposed rules actually simplified previous existing rules, standardizing things into grades so that buyers and sellers could know what they're getting more easily between different nations. There were three grades and the bottom grade was a catch-all grade. The bulk of the rules were actually things of the nature of saying you couldn't shipments that have mold and other defects of that nature, which is all common sense but if you don't write it down some asshole will try and circumvent it, but Boris of course didn't mention any of that.

You really do need rules about this stuff. For example say you buy a shipment of "top grade" bananas but when you get them they're half-black with splotches and mold and all different sizes, and funny shapes. You got ripped off. But the term "top grade" isn't defined so what are you going to do? So food labeling laws generally say you cannot use the term Top Grade to describe your product if that's misleading, but you then have to define some set of guidelines about what the hell "Top Grade" actually means, and that of course requires you define what people think a banana is supposed to look like, which guys like Boris can then deliberately misinterpret as trying to " "force bananas to look a certain way". What it's actually about, is about transparency in buying and selling by standardizing descriptions. If Top Grade bananas is a defined thing, and you buy them and they don't match what that's supposed to look like, you can in fact sue their asses off. This is what it's about.

As for the Swedish apples, it's a clear bet that you can still sell splotchy apples as much as you want, you just can't label them as being whatever grade they consider for supermarkets. I'd be sure splotchy apples can still be sold for processing etc. This is about being pissed that the apples they want to sell don't fit the grade you want to label it as: i.e, "they should pay us a lot of money for our apples, the bastards!" But ... if the grade was changed then the people buying it would know it had been changed and they'd pay you no more for it than they do now.  The whole idea of how Germans are too picky about apples and how that's an intolerable affront to Sweden is just ludicrous tabloid bullshit. The only reason you care and they're writing about it is because Germans have money, and your industry wants their money, but doesn't have a product Germans actually want.

What grade they're considered as doesn't change how much they're actually worth in the market, and if the EU let anyone with apples like your ones called them "A Grade" which is clearly what Sweden wants, then the private industry would just come up with their own labeling system to avoid mixing your apples in with the ones they like more. They'd call the better ones "A++ Grade" informally or something, but because it's an informal designation it'd go back to things being less transparent, thus defeating the entire purpose of having agreed-on grades.

[Jopax]

In non-bendy banananana news, I think I probably caught the plague now.

Was hanging out with my cousin this weekend and today he let me know he's tested positive. We spent a good few hours together so if he was anything approaching infectious I probably caught it. Feeling ok so far I guess, but if I do start showing symptoms it'll probably be by the end of the week.

Fun times ahead I guess :V