Coronavirus

[GeddyWrox]

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backpaged mike.

[GeddyWrox]

Here are my preliminary questions:

How long does immunity last with the vaccine?
I know they don't know that yet, and that's understandable. But it's a pretty important question to answer.

When they say 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021, does "dose" mean an individual dose of the vaccine, or does it refer to the two doses one would need to achieve vaccination?
This is also pretty important, because if they are making 1.3 billion doses a year, and "dose" means a singular dosage, it will take roughly 10 years to produce enough doses for the world's population. That timeline also assumes no other boosters are needed, and it can be a vaccination process similar to smallpox or polio.

Have they seen any mutation(s) of the virus such that a COVID-19 vaccine would parallel a flu vaccine, whereby they would have to theorize/guess/determine which strain would be most prevalent in a given year and base the vaccine's formula on that?


Finally, and this isn't a question, but I'll keep raising this issue for the foreseeable future: I hope they keep studying the long-term effects of contracting COVID-19.

All valid questions mike.

As to the mutations one, I have read a few different sources that have said this virus mutates on the slower side as compared to other infections viruses. Hopefully that stays true. If it speeds up, woe unto us.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I haven't looked into it and don't have time right now. But, I'll chime in with how it relates to what we've talked about already. And, this information may not be known now wrt to the vaccine and its biomechanics apparently even pfizer doesn't have all the information yet...so take it fwiw.

If the vaccine is triggering a t cell response and the t cells 'learn' how to make antibodies preventing sars-cov-2 from entering the cells, the immunity will likely be long lasting. That's based on the t cell responses that have been seen in both Sars-cov-1 and Sars-cov-2 patients. ETA: T Cell response doesn't necessarily prevent infection, it just speeds up the immune response to where it produces antibodies within hours or a day or so instead of the weeks it currently takes for those patients whose bodies have not seen the virus. It thereby in theory decreases the danger/harm the virus does.

It also assumes that mutations do not occur quickly. There are stories swirling about the amount of mutations and what not. It's also why therapeutics are polyclonal and not monoclonal....the thought being if the virus mutates such that a monoclonal antibody is no longer effective, then the entire therapeutic is worthless. If you have multiple antibodies and the virus mutates such that one of the antibodies doesn't work, the other ones still will and the therapeutic will still be effective. To date, I don't believe this is a fast mutating virus like the flu but obviously there are multiple strains out there already. So who knows.

This is a two dose vaccine. And, the storage requirements are intense (I think -80 degrees Celsius). So, people have to get two injections and those doses need to be stored at incredibly cold temperatures. Pfizer can make something that keeps the vaccines cold...but at what cost and for how long and also in what quantum (obviously they won't make a container to keep 1 does at -80 it'll be in the hundreds if not thousands). This won't be an issue for nursing homes and hospitals that can pretty easily predict how many vaccines they will give out in a day to their workers and or patients. But, when you start looking at pharmacies or doctor offices that will be essential to distribute the doses to civilians, if they have to 'thaw' 500 doses at a time how likely is it that exactly 500 people will show up to receive the vaccine on the exact day they are supposed to.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Okay, looked a little more into it while on a conference call so this is not a very complete explanation but adds a little light...

The pfizer vaccine is an mRNA vaccine and would be the first of its kind to be used against an infectious disease. Moderna's vaccine is mRNA as well. Basically, the vaccine is instructions to build a portion of the virus, in this particular case its instructions to build the s protein (the spike).

All quotes taken from this article written in April though there are more out there. https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/fiv ... cines.html

Vaccines work by training the body to recognise and respond to the proteins produced by disease-causing organisms, such as a virus or bacteria. Traditional vaccines are made up of small or inactivated doses of the whole disease-causing organism, or the proteins that it produces, which are introduced into the body to provoke the immune system into mounting a response.

mRNA vaccines, in contrast, trick the body into producing some of the viral proteins itself. They work by using mRNA, or messenger RNA, which is the molecule that essentially puts DNA instructions into action. Inside a cell, mRNA is used as a template to build a protein. ‘An mRNA is basically like a pre-form of a protein and its (sequence encodes) what the protein is basically made of later on,’ said Prof. Bekeredjian-Ding.

To produce an mRNA vaccine, scientists produce a synthetic version of the mRNA that a virus uses to build its infectious proteins. This mRNA is delivered into the human body, whose cells read it as instructions to build that viral protein, and therefore create some of the virus’s molecules themselves. These proteins are solitary, so they do not assemble to form a virus. The immune system then detects these viral proteins and starts to produce a defensive response to them.

Little more info for your reading pleasure about the immune system and how this vaccine could possibly work (again, I don't think even pfizer has access to this information yet, they were just informed of the overall efficacy from the review board...surely tests will be forthcoming to answer some of these questions).

There are two parts to our immune system: innate (the defences we’re born with) and acquired (which we develop as we come into contact with pathogens). Classical vaccine molecules usually only work with the acquired immune system and the innate immune system is activated by another ingredient, called an adjuvant. Interestingly, mRNA in vaccines could also trigger the innate immune system, providing an extra layer of defence without the need to add adjuvants.

‘All kinds of innate immune cells are being activated by the mRNA,’ said Prof. Bekeredjian-Ding. ‘This primes the immune system to get prepared for an endangering pathogen and thus the type of immune response that is triggered is very strong.’

There is still a lot of work to be done to understand this response, the length of the protection it could give and whether there are any downsides.

...

Using tumour mRNA in this way activates the body’s T-cells – the part of the acquired immune system that kills cells, which is useful to destroy tumours. It could be important for coronavirus, too. ‘In viral infections, often we know that there is a need for a strong T-cell response because viruses like to hide in cells,’ said Prof. Bekeredjian-Ding. ‘There is a certain hope that, especially in this setting, this could really work … and thereby eliminate … the infected cells from the body.’

But to combat a virus such as SARS-CoV-2, it is likely that a different part of the acquired immune system also needs to be activated – the B cells, which produce antibodies that mark the virus out for destruction by the body. ‘And there is little experience with this (apart from animal infection models), because for the tumour model this was not that relevant.’

Lastly, from this article they mention that these types of vaccines are easier to produce because its largely reliant on the body to make the proteins, these are just codes ... er something. I guess it's like they write a code and let the body do the work to build the proteins instead of building the proteins themselves...though this is from an article written in April, I'm not sure if it has been born out by the study/development. Still, it's uplifting so I include it.

Once an mRNA vaccine has been approved, which could take 12-18 months, it should be easy to scale up production. Because the manufacturing process is shorter than for other vaccines – Prof. Bekeredjian-Ding estimates a few months rather than 1-2 years for conventional vaccines – there is potential for these vaccines to be scaled up quickly. This is useful in the context of coronavirus, which will likely need mass immunisation programmes.

From a few other articles, the promising news is that: 1. mrna vaccines appear to work meaning moderna's will likely work as well. 2. targeting the s protein was a wise decision. 3. that's good because almost all the vaccines in development target the s protein and this lends optimism to all those vaccines too.

Biggest question remaining, I guess, is what type of immune response are they seeing and what implications will that have on long lasting immunity.

ETA: One decidedly positive response has been the absence of any type of antibody dependent enhancement where the body in response to a vaccine produces antibodies that aid a virus' progression rather than suppress it as the 2016 dengue vaccine notoriously did which in turn led to deaths and lawsuits and criminal charges and a [expletive] situation in general.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Discussion with co-authors of the 'competing' Great Barrington Declaration and John Snow Memorandum.

Nice to see a rather civil conversation between the two sides. I don't really think I can give a tl;dw on this one because the topics are so vast it would turn into a novel. Vastly simplified it is this. GBD is not a 'let her rip' strategy. Expanding upon it, they do believe in well established practices such as distancing, masking, focused protection, etc but don't believe in lockdowns especially among the least vulnerable. There is no good path forward only a path of minimizing bad.

Topics include:
Introductions
How to protect the vulnerable
Schools
Harms of lockdown
Definitions of lockdown
Longhaulers
Excess deaths/covid deaths
And all sorts of little nuggets

[mikechamp]

Here's a public statement, granted in layman's terms, that tempers the excitement on the vaccine announcement:

Covid vaccine: Boris Johnson warns of 'several more hurdles'

The development of a coronavirus vaccine has "cleared one significant hurdle but there are several more to go", Boris Johnson has said. He warned people not to "rely on this news as a solution" to the pandemic.

"The biggest mistake we could make now would be to slacken our resolve at a critical moment," he said.

Dr Charlie Weller, a vaccines specialist at the Wellcome Trust, said the speed of the vaccine's progress was "phenomenal" but warned no single jab would be a silver bullet against the virus. She added that the technology behind the vaccine, so-called messenger RNA, had not been proved effective in jabs before. It has been suggested it could lead to safer vaccines for many types of viruses in future.

Speaking alongside Mr Johnson at a Downing Street news conference, England's deputy chief medical officer, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam said there was more work to be done before it became available to the public. Prof Van-Tam described the development as similar to "getting to the end of the playoff final, it's gone to penalties, the first player goes up and scores a goal".

"You haven't won the cup yet, but what it does is it tells you that the goalkeeper can be beaten," he said.

In this article, I also got an answer to one of my questions from earlier in the thread; a dose is a singular dose and not the dosage needed for "complete" vaccination:

The prime minister said 40 million doses - enough to vaccinate up to 20 million people - had been ordered, putting the UK near the front of the queue of countries in securing the jab.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54879676

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Hey hey! A day after getting negative test results, my boss is home with symptoms. He's getting retested ( he had a negative test about 10 days ago) and then we'll see.

[Leroy]

Illinois has a rolling week average over 11,000. Seems bad.

[mikechamp]

Illinois has a rolling week average over 11,000. Seems bad.

The region I reside in has a 7-day rolling average positivity rate over 12%; my county's is over 13%. How we aren't shut down is beyond me.

Well, actually I do know. Our county is run by people who care more about the economy than public health.

And most of the parents are cool with that. How do I know? Because I (sadly) listened to our school board meeting last night, and it was clear to me that the parents in attendance & speaking up want their kids out of the house. Meanwhile, the superintendent extols the public health benefits of hybrid attendance/social distancing, and in the next breath explains how they're going back to full-time attendance next semester and won't be able to socially distance the kids. (Remote learning is still an option, and I suspect they will see an increase in that option.)

[cardsfantx]

Seems at this rate, we’ll just hit the herd immunity threshold anyways