651–660 of 1001 posts
For those wondering how their vaccines will be distributed among countries during the next year when supply is constrained... it seems complicated. Pfizer is a US company, but has at least one key ingredient from Austria, is made with technology from Germany, has manufacturing in US+Europe, etc. Pfizer's CEO answered this question this morning on CNBC. Pfizer has two separate manufacturing divisions- one in the US (M…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ebola was localized. COVID-19 is not. I like your optimism, and what you said isn't incorrect about Ebola at the time, but I don't think it's correct about our current situation. How many locations globally have this level of refrigeration? Given that there would be high demand for it, wouldn't prices on any available refrigerators exceed what even the most altruistic companies and organizations could pay? This still…
I dealing some on the distribution side of this. NYT has a pretty good article explaining all the infrastructure that is being rolled out. (1) Even dry ice in coolers is low tech but gets you a lot of time considering storage for the second booster dose will be centralized. The risk is real though. Breaks in cold chain storage have inactivated vaccines have been documented to leading to outbreaks in other disease sta…
Surely there's got to be some existing shipping indicator to track if a shipment has exceeded the temperature limits during transit. Even just a vial filled with a liquid that freezes at e.g. -70C would work just by tipping it upside down when frozen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is 90% protection against disease, not necessarily 90% protection against infection. There's an important distinction: * Protection against disease means that you don't get sick. You may still contract the virus and spread it to others (the Salk vaccine against Polio works this way). * Sterilizing immunity means that you can't even get infected, so that you can't pass the virus on to other people. It does not lo…
Without sterilizing immunity, will the amount of virus a vaccinated individual carries match that of a non vaccinated individual, though? I guess what I (a layman) is asking is, even if the vaccinated individual contracts the virus, won't they spread less of it than someone truly sick?
Good: + ~90% of individuals achieve immunity. + no significant side-effects. Not so good: - two doses needed, 3 weeks apart, immunity after one month from first dose. Slow rollout. - -80C storage and transport needed. Challenging, but doable in developed countries, but still may slow down mass rollout. Not feasible in many developing countries. I still wonder about long-term immunity. Anyone can share any insight?
This is good news but I'm worried about the mutation already showing up in minks in Denmark. Minks apparently have a near identical respiratory system. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/denmark-plans-kill-15-mil...
https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/05/spread-of-mutated-corona...
A more aggressive take: https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/13240857614493040...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're already manufacturing millions of doses of the drug and have been for months. The military already has an action plan for distributing it nation wide. Realistically they're ready to go right now they are just waiting for FDA approval.
Lol you vastly overestimate the capabilities of the US Gov and Military. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if you can't get a dose if you want one until well into 2021.
I'm sure my company will do everything they can to ensure factory and retail workers will be next. Factory because shutting down our factory would be a disaster to our finances. Retail because all employees who are supposed to not go anywhere still get groceries, so protecting those workers reduces are contact. The the CEO is next, probably only slightly above the rest of us office workers who can stay home.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The latest data (preprint, not peer reviewed etc etc) mention memory B and T cells up to 8 months after recovery from the illness. This means that an immunity of one year is probably likely. This would be probably enough to quench the spread, but not to eradicate the virus.
I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyone in the vicinity of the infected person. But I don't think even that will be necessary. 90% efficiency reduces R so much, it will probably die out on its own. The real problem is mutations that are not covered by the vaccine. If it mutates as efficiently as…
You’re assuming 100pct of the population takes the vaccine. I’d be surprised if it’s more than 50% the first year
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyone in the vicinity of the infected person. But I don't think even that will be necessary. 90% efficiency reduces R so much, it will probably die out on its own. The real problem is mutations that are not covered by the vaccine. If it mutates as efficiently as…
Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere. It's a nice idea conceptually, but the problem is psychological. People stop caring about tracing when 98% of all trace connections are false positives. If a person is infectious for a week and the r0 is around 1 then only 1 person of all the people they've been in contact with will actually contract the virus on average. The other 50+ people, assuming they can even b…
I am not sure this is true. At least some articles I read attribute the successes in many Asian countries to aggressive contact tracing and quarantining. You don't ask people kindly to self-isolate, you move them to hotels and quarantine them. You don't ask them to remember their contacts, you aggressively investigate them using every source of data available.
I think an argument can be made that Europe simply got it wrong in the details. In order to find less invasive means of controlling covid that respect privacy we ended up limiting freedoms much more and for longer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vast majority of the cases are asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms.
I don't think anybody disputes this. But each new person who gets it is a potential spreader, which increases the likelihood of an at-risk person getting it. Someone who may be elderly or immunocompromised, who can be seriously hurt or killed by it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"diverse backgrounds" What does that mean exactly? Surely a random sample of people will have diverse backgrounds.
It means that it includes people from different ethnicity, ages (also younger and older people) and some immunocompromised people.