3 mos ago, I told you mRNA would work .....:)
COVID-19 Pandemic: Transmissions, Deaths, Treatments, Vaccines, Interventions and More...
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3 mos ago, I told you mRNA would work .....:)
~10%. Moderna is going all in with the PR game and speculators always love the new kid on the block. Also, PFE isn't completely dependent on this one vaccine working. Moderna is at this point.
I know people at Pfizer and Pfizer took some of their best people from other therapeutic areas and placed them on the Covid programs. They're not playing around. The scientific might of the pharma/biotech community in the end will help humanity beat this virus. I am 100% sure of this.
What I want to understand is how long those neutralizing antibodies stay around? Sounds like the body keeps those antibodies around naturally only for a few months. Can these vaccines do better artificially?
Also, I hope they are invoking the right antibodies like the one outlined here https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/07/10/science.abd2321
But wouldn't more recent data, and not overall data, be more relevant as to what we should do now?
Yes you did and I'm still skeptical, given mRNA vaccines have never worked before for any viral disease, but, we haven't tried this hard before and the data, so far, are at least promising, so I'm a bit less skeptical than before. I still think China has the first vaccine at scale with their old-school deactivated coronavirus approach, which really should simply work (and I'm disappointed the US has none of these candidates in Warp Speed), but a bunch of others are going to be in the race for 2nd. The really interesting question is what does the US do if China's vaccine is available first and other countries start using it and it looks to be safe and effective.
If by winning, you mean winning the race to have, by far, the highest death rates among the similarly situated Nordic countries, without coming anywhere close to herd immunity, well then yes, they're winning.
Obviously I've gotten way behind in following this thread, but I'm a physical therapist for a large corporation in NJ. Although I personally haven't yet treated a formerly COVID+ person, we are treating them and recording various data for future analysis.
I love good news and Europeans being back in school is good news. But the only reason they are is because their current case and death rates are 10-20X lower than ours. Whether or not they had more deaths than we did back in March/April is irrelevant to their decisions on schools. Your original post of "Euros are already in school, even those with higher death rates than US" implies that they're back in school despite the higher death rates, which is misleading - it's all about the current rates. And because of that, I could see NY/NJ/CT etc who are all doing quite well now, reopening schools, with appropriate precautions, as in Europe, but not those states in the south and west with peaking cases and increasing deaths, unless they can control their outbreaks.
We have heard all of this before about Aids, Alzheimer's etc. Throwing people and money at something doesn't guarantee success. The comments by Pfizer had nothing to do with getting closer to success. It was about $
Anyone notice how Sweden has been doing?
Really shows you the power of social distancing in countries with low population density. But in order for it to work, the people need respect the rules and the disease. It helps that Sweden is a modern, intelligent country that listens to their government.
I only went through the NEJM paper from Moderna. Most of the data are in the supplements.
From what I see, the CD4 T cell response is very low (0.15-0.2% make cytokine). The CD8 T cell response is nonexistent. See Page 23 and 24 Fig. S10 and S11. They say otherwise in the text of the paper, but the data are the data. This is a very big concern.
Everyone always focuses on the AB response, not the T Cell response. For people like me that don’t know anything, how important is the T Cell response?
Love the negative deaths caused by Covid in the second graph. What, did day old corpses start strolling out of the EU morgues in early June? Maybe it’s Transylvania and they were already undead.Another uninformed post. Their death rates, overall, since the pandemic started, may be greater, but their current case rate is 1/20th ours (per capita) and their current death rates are 1/13th that of the US. That's why they're back in schools.
https://www.gzeromedia.com/the-graphic-truth-are-new-us-covid-deaths-surging-vs-eu
And they don’t tell you how many deaths had underlying medical issues. In NY state it’s over 90%. If this is the case in California then less than 350 people have passed that we’re not LTC or underlying medical issues.
someone tell me that this is fake...please
I doubt it's some sort of conspiracy, if you're going to fudge the #'s this is not how you do it.
How did the spikes in cases not make sense?
Do the rising hospitalizations and deaths also not make sense?
It's true the 100% positivity rate does not make sense. But the increases in cases, hospitalizations and fatalities are in line.
Where’s the denominator? Just looks like incomplete data throwing off the % formula. Deaths and hospitalizations continue to rise so this is really just noise.
Yeah, faking it by putting down 100% would be beyond dumb. Sounds like the FL DOH, which is under DeSantis, has some explaining to do, as they're supposed to check the numbers coming in from the hospitals. We should also try to find out what the hospitals are doing, as I can't imagine anywhere with over 75% positives and 100% makes zero sense. I can see a few errors where someone missed a decimal place (9.8% becoming 98%), but not this many. Between this and the double counting of antibody and viral tests (which was being done for awhile and would've likely lowered the positivity rate), as well as the mess in FL's hospital reporting, it's no wonder it's hard to know what's going on in that state.
Yeah, that's bad. I actually emailed them, although emails to websites often don't do anything. That's where a decent editor can save the day...
Good catch. I had only read the paper, not the supplement. The paper has the following section, but I don't know enough to know what level of CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses to the virus are considered "good." Maybe you do? Also, I think they have a typo, since Fig S11 shows a low level response in the S-1P peptide pool, not S-2P.
SARS-COV-2 T-CELL RESPONSES
The 25-μg and 100-μg doses elicited CD4 T-cell responses (Figs. S9 and S10) that on stimulation by S-specific peptide pools were strongly biased toward expression of Th1 cytokines (tumor necrosis factor α > interleukin 2 > interferon γ), with minimal type 2 helper T-cell (Th2) cytokine expression (interleukin 4 and interleukin 13). CD8 T-cell responses to S-2P were detected at low levels after the second vaccination in the 100-μg dose group (Fig. S11).
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483?query=featured_home
Also, as far as I could tell, the Pfizer preprint on their phase I trial didn't have any data on T-cells - not sure if they didn't do any evaluation of it or not. Seems odd. Since we know there are people who barely develop antibodies, post-infection and yet recover, many have been speculating this could be due to the T-cell response, so it would be good to have that from the phase I trials. That seems like baseline vaccine pharmacobiology data to obtain.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.30.20142570v1
I also wonder how they would separate out the T-cell response seen in these studies from any "natural" T-cell response some subject might have due to cross-reactivity (which has mostly been seen via CD4 and not CD8 cells. The excerpt below is from the recent Nature commentary on this...
Pre-existing CD4+ T cell memory could also influence vaccination outcomes, leading to a faster or better immune response, particularly the development of neutralizing antibodies, which generally depend on T cell help. At the same time, pre-existing T cell memory could also act as a confounding factor, especially in relatively small phase I vaccine trials. For example, if subjects with pre-existing reactivity were assorted unevenly in different vaccine dose groups, this might lead to erroneous conclusions. Obviously, this could be avoided by considering pre-existing immunity as a variable to be considered in trial design. Thus, we recommend measuring pre-existing immunity in all COVID-19 vaccine phase I clinical trials. Of note, such experiments would also offer an exciting opportunity to ascertain the potential biological significance of pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-0389-z
And here's at least one other obviously hot topic these days for those of us in the US: the ongoing outbreaks in a number of states in the south/west that didn't have major outbreaks earlier (at least not like the NE US did). Below is last night's post on this from the other thread to start things off.
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...entions-and-more.191275/page-222#post-4622777
Updating from Saturday's post. Anyone expecting significant increases in deaths in any of these 5 states (TX/FL/AZ/CA/GA) before about now (except maybe AZ; see below) just hasn't been paying attention to previous trajectories/timelines. The increases in cases in May and early June in these states were fairly small, except for AZ, which started climbing significantly in early June, which is likely why we're starting to see deaths climb there the past few days (see graphic for AZ below and FL to see the difference, as FL hasn't really started to rise much yet). I like this graphic more than the simple 7-day moving average, as it normalizes the 7-day average vs the greatest peak in cases on a percentage basis, making state-to-state comparisons on a single graph easier.
The significant increases started about mid-June for TX/FL/CA/GA and given a general 1-2 week lag in seeing hospitalizations rise (which we're seeing) and a general 2-4 weeks lag in seeing deaths increase, so we should start to see deaths increase this week and especially next week. But as I've said multiple times, given more younger people infected, more mild cases detected (with a lot of testing vs. little to no testing in the NY/NJ case, early on), and improved medical procedures/treatments, I would expect the rise in deaths to be somewhat muted vs. what we saw in NY/NJ. If that occurs, that's great for humans, but it makes it hard for scientists to ascribe root causes to a change like that vs. what we saw in the first wave.
Time to revisit this, since I said there would be a 2-4 week lag from cases starting to rise significantly to deaths rising significantly in response. With those significant rises starting around 6/15 for TX/FL/CA (with CA maybe 2-3 days behind TX/FL; also the start was maybe 6/1 in AZ and 6/22 in GA), that meant deaths were likely to start rising somewhere between 6/29 and 7/13 in those three states and looking at the graphs below, we certainly started to see death rates rise by around 7/7-7/8 and they were clearly rising by 7/13. The huge question, obviously, is how high will they go? Keep in mind that the following comparisons are being made on what we all know are likely flawed datasets, but it's the only data we have and my main focus is on death rates, assuming we should at least be able to count those reasonably well. I used the COVID Tracking Project graphics (JHU data), as they offer cases/hospitalizations/deaths and tests per capita on a 7-day moving average on one page per state, so the state comparisons are at least apples to apples. I wish they offered the multiple state comparisons on one chart for deaths that they offer for cases.
https://covidtracking.com/data
My guess has been per capita deaths will be moderately to significantly lower than what we saw in the first wave in the NE US, especially in NY/NJ, so I'm including NJ for comparison purposes (the graphics below also show the US death rates on the same graphic as each state and these are all 7-day moving averages). My first guesstimate was about 1/2-2/3 the death rate, per capita of NJ, given the much younger average infected patient age in these S/W states, the lesser disease severity seen when tested positive (since far more people are being tested per day, per capita now), and, the combination of improved medical procedures and pharmaceutical treatments (like remdesivir, dexamethasone, tocilizumab, and especially convalescent plasma). I then adjusted that guess to 1/3-2/3 the NJ per capita rate when it started looking like hospitalization rates would likely be maybe 30-40% lower in AZ vs. NJ's (as AZ was ahead of the other states). CA/TX/FL are still ramping up in hospitalization rates, but are well behind the hosp/case ratio we saw in NJ.
Looking at the graphics below, NJ had a peak of just over 30 deaths per 1MM people, so 1/3-2/3 of that would roughly be 10-20 deaths/1MM. Right now, we see FL closing in on 4 and Texas around 3.4, while CA is just below 3, but TX/CA have both had recent peaks on multiple days around 4 deaths/1MM and FL has been up to 6. These numbers are still well below 30 deaths/1MM and below my 10-20 guesstimate, but they're rising and the rise is looking at least moderately steep right now, plus AZ is already almost at 10 deaths/1MM, with several days peaking over that level, so unfortunately, it looks like at least 10 deaths/1MM is in range. Let's hope CA/TX/FL don't even reach the 10 deaths per 1MM level and that we can figure out exactly why, i.e., how much of the drop is due to which variable (age, severity, procedures, or treatments).
And let's also hope that the greatly increased case levels, which are now close to or above (in FL and AZ) NJ's per capita case rate (which we should note was likely significantly greater than reported, as full testing wasn't in place back then at the peak) don't lead to major outbreaks among the elderly in these states. If that happens and the average infected age rises significantly, NJ-level death rates per capita start to become possible.
https://www.abc27.com/news/covid-19-hospital-data-will-go-to-white-house-before-cdc/
Hospital data will go to the White House before the CDC.
Hospital data will go to the White House before the CDC.
So expect all numbers to improve dramatically very soon.
I haven't seen much posted in this thread on the Oxford vaccine. I have zero expertise in this area and thank @RU848789 and @UMRU as well as others for their insightful contributions to the thread.
Below is an article from Bloomberg on the Oxfords vaccine. I believe The Economist and WSJ had recent stories on it as well.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...-organic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
Below is an article from Bloomberg on the Oxfords vaccine. I believe The Economist and WSJ had recent stories on it as well.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...-organic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
Something like that.
One thing we know for certain. The shut down crew simply isn’t listening to doctors or science.
I admit I purposefully left my post on Sweden vague. To your credit were the only person who saw that graph and understood the questions that should be asked. Kudos to you for the questions you asked because they were the same ones I asked myself.
Indoor bars and restaurants have been open all along with rules about >1meter spacing. They have made no real changes to practices and yet the cases began a steep decline on June 29th. Seems like some other explanation is needed and I too continue to wonder why the virus seems to burnout well below the expected 60% herd immunity. I guess we will see if something similar happens in FL, CA, TX, etc.
They reported 34 new cases yesterday out of 81000 tests for a rate of 0.04%. This sudden decline is something that needs to be better understood.
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To be technical, CDC reports to HHS, so the data are "under the Administration" in either case, but this is highly irregular and will not inspire confidence in the veracity of the data. The CDC has not shined during the pandemic, but they've always been the ones to collect and disseminate data on infectious diseases to protect public health.
Sorry, but that data does not suggest that to me as they have not changed much and yet the virus seems to have a similar wall as seen in many countries, states, etc. From their policies experts expected 40 times the spread, ICU's etc and although their numbers are higher than surrounding countries who have tighter restrictions, the dropoff the last two weeks suggests something much more positive might be in play.
FWIW, they reported 34 new cases out of 81000 tests yesterday for a positivity rate of about 0.04%!!!!!!!!
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someone tell me that this is fake...please
Yea, agreed. Most likely a data reporting error, like the labs used the wrong format for reporting. If you wanted to misrepresent data and inflate the numbers you wouldn't push up the numbers like this. Did a little bit of searching on this and found an good ELI5 on the Reddit Florida coronavirus forum,
Being such a new "phenomenon" in Sweden there doesn't seem to be much data on this. I did find the link below. They surmise that due to the much less stringent "lockdowns" and early death counts in Sweden the population has become vigilant, perhaps more vigilant than other EU countries, with social distancing and hygiene.
"Ironically, basic social distancing requirements in Sweden are now stricter than in many other countries. That’s because places like Denmark and Norway have rolled back the severe lockdowns they imposed early on to fight Covid-19. The stringency of Swedish requirements according to the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker shows the country now places greater restrictions on movement than Norway and Finland"
https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/swedish-covid-infections-drop-after-steady-distancing-patterns
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