Coronavirus (Covid19) Corner

[Whyperion]

Well at least one vaccine trials look positive, no downsides as such reported, but , it is only 90% effective and only after a month of the first treatment (why= will it lead to an increase in the covid RNA proteins that it does not protect against?). Two doeses needed 21 days apart, but there are logistical challenges as the vaccine has to be kept in ultra-cold storage at below minus 80C., and does the protection fade over time ?

The obvious is to use it for medical workers , the military, and maybe teachers.

[Whyperion]

Medical Matters if you like BBC Two 9pm Monday 09 November
Fly on the Wall at the Royal Free Hospital London in recent months.
Basically showing up the failures in and around the NHS , re testing before admission and operations (planned) none or slow results or insufficient , plus cancellation (on cost grounds) of the elective major surgery at the nearby private hospitals with less than 24 hours notice. Quite simply Starmer or others need to raise this with Health Secretary, the problems are not at the medical or local admin staff level but clearly within parts of NHS England and very senior management, As I said early re Nightingales it has been a total lie that the 'NHS' was saved by govt action.

[plaques]

Depressing viewing. Why does it take a fly on the wall to expose that the NHS is obviously failing through under investment. We hear platitudes that we must protect the NHS at all costs but not it appears if it costs money. This is just one hospital how many more are facing the same situation while the government is playing the numbers game with covid but allowing suffering and deaths to occur in other areas that don't feature in the current headlines. If NHS hospitals are cheaper to run that private suppliers then it makes sense to expand to NHS to meet the real and urgent demand we are facing.

[Stanley]

All true Ken and has been for many years. Despite the fact that 'private health provision' is more expensive and not universal it is a matter if ideology with the more rabid Tories and that's who we have to target to get an improvement.
The first improvement should be to pay all health workers a living wage......

[Tizer]

..it is a matter of ideology with the more rabid Tories and that's who we have to target to get an improvement...

Yes, and that's the answer to Plaques's question `Why does it take a fly on the wall to expose that the NHS is obviously failing through under investment.' It needs as much exposure as possible because there are some who don't want to admit it.

It's good to hear the Pfizer vaccine is progressing well. Meanwhile: `China's Sinovac vaccine trial halted in Brazil' LINK but it's probably only a one off coincidental death not linked to the vaccine like the the time when Oxford had to stop it's trial for a few days.

More information comes out on the mink covid outbreaks: `'Mutant coronavirus' seen before on mink farms, say scientists' LINK What the article doesn't say is that it's time we stopped keeping animals in intensive, high-density farms. It's only when something like this happens that the public finds out just how many mink farms there are around the world.

I've just been reading about the psychiatric disorders resulting from covid-19 infection. It makes me wonder whether many of the psychiatric disorder cases we've seen in the past might be the result of past severe viral infection rather than genetic or environmental problems. Several other coronaviruses have been endemic in the UK population for a long time.

[Stanley]

"I've just been reading about the psychiatric disorders resulting from covid-19 infection."
Find something more cheerful Peter! I'm suffering enough reading Mark Kulansky's account of how incomers ruined the salmon rivers and their resources by over exploitation. The indigenous people were regarded as 'savages' but had managed the resource for thousands of years without harming it.
That applies equally to the Mink Farms.
As for the NHS, in the same way the settlers exploited the rivers, venture capital will try to take over the management of health services because they are essential and profitable. This nibbling at the edges has been going on for 30 years but with a possible US/UK trade deal could become much more overt. The name of the game isn't altruism, it's naked profit.

[Tripps]

The news of the Pfizer vaccine has been with us for a few days now. Time to consider it.

Professor Johnathon van Tam seems to be a big fan, and said he would be first in the queue when his cohort become eligible, He also says he has told his 79 year old mum to roll up her sleeve and stand by. I've liked his contributions so far- no nonsense and credible, if a bit too fond of metaphors.

Should I now cheer up and welcome the news. Well yes I have, and I do, however I note that

The vaccine, it seems, has not yet finished its stage 3 trial, and has not yet officially been deemed to be 'safe'. No one in the trial was aged above about 55 years. This for an infection which has enormous differences depending on the age of the infected person. The pecking order is that the old should be first in line, and jabbing should start in just a few weeks time. Canaries and Guinea Pigs is my quick word association reaction.

The results have been announced by a press release rather than a scholarly paper with peer review. The company in partnership with Pfizer is said now to be worth £3 billion.

Someone with a suspicious mind might say that the timing of the news seems to have fitted in with the USA presidential election result, and was delayed until Donald was out of the way.

Conclusion - show me as hopeful, encouraged by a rare bit of good news, but I don't think it's over yet by a long way. Would I take it? I'm in roughly the fifth eligible group - and I think I might - but a lot may happen in the next few months.

Nice to have somewhere to jot down my thoughts - feel fee to ignore it all.

Many other vaccines will shortly become available.

[plaques]

Farther up the list than most and in front of Van Tam's mother I look at it with my bookmakers cap on. By the time its finished all its trials it will be pronounced safe for all age groups. But as with all vaccines there could be a very very small risk lets imagine it to be in the order on 1 in 10,000. Even at this risk level you may not finish up in the obituary column. Catching covid for my age group is a 1 in 10 chance of being dispatched to the promised land. Going back to the odds calculation its either 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 10. A no-brainer as they say.
Naysayers may add that the vaccine is 90% effective and there's still a 1 in 10 chance of getting it but that still brings the odds down to 1 in 100 before its goodbye from me. Always look on the bright side of life.

[Tripps]

its either 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 10. A no-brainer as they say.

Indeed.

[Stanley]

I share Peter's reservations about this vaccine. By the way, I am not alone, I heard a small voice somewhere yesterday saying that the sooner the Oxford drug came on stream the better because it was cheaper and less complicated than the Pfizer one. (Nobody's said anything about the price...)
I'm with Ken and David. Show me a vaccine and I'll be there like a shot.

[PanBiker]

I'm with Ken and David. Show me a vaccine and I'll be there like a shot.

Count me in as well.

Why does it make me think of the song "Transfusion" by Nervous Norvous? A novelty record from long ago.

"Pump the fluid in me Louie"

[Tizer]

Probabilities - when I started having breathing problems 10 years ago I went for the pre-op meeting before having an angioscopy to find out if my heart was faulty. I was warned there is always some danger in the operation so I asked how much. The answer was about 1 in 100 chance of death, `about the same as dying in a parachute jump'. I told them I'd willingly jump! (I think they were referring to death in an old style military para jump - for modern `skydiving' it's reported as I in 100,000.)

Early results from trials of a Covid vaccine developed in Russia suggest it could be 92% effective. Obviously, it's early days but better than getting bad results at this stage. Their vaccine has the advantage that it doesn't need the extremely low temperature storage of the Oxford and Pfizer vaccines.
`Russian Covid vaccine shows encouraging results' LINK

There was a discussion on the radio yesterday about students returning home for Christmas. The government spokesperson said it was OK because they'll be checked for covid beforehand with the new rapid test. The other person in the discussion expressed concern because she claimed to have heard the test was giving `lots of false positives' and this could result in groups of student having to remain together and not being able to go home if one one of them was positive even if it was a false positive. What struck me was how do you know if the test gives `lots of false positives'? I can understand how that could be measured in a carefully controlled and monitored experiment with lots of repeat testing but I can't see how you could make that conclusion in practice. Just because a person shows no symptoms doesn't mean they're not infected.

[Whyperion]

Better a false positive than a false negative. I do wonder though what the tests are picking up, as CV seems similar in parts to other Coronaviruses maybe that is the problem.

[Whyperion]

I am still worried about the pfizer "vaccine" , it seems based on what a smaller company was doing in training immune system to see key markers of cancer cells as outsiders and seek and destroy - I am not certain how successful that was. The bit of the science I cannot follow is that the RNA chain being the basis is the bit that creates the spike (key) that latches to the Ace-2 receptor. Now to me (and I know I asked and got a sort of answer but can it be more simplified), are there (good and needed) things that need access to the Ace-2 receptor , will they inadvertantly be blocked leading to depletion of things needed - and additionally will the Cov-19 virus change the protein code associated with bits around the spike building (actually I presume the bit the vaccine aims for is less the key itself, but the bit that binds the key to the covid 'virus'. In respect of persons over 55 not being trialled on I assume the risk of over 55 infection in the testing process is too great to give it a placebo blind trial, so having tested that it is not unsafe in younger persons , it logically should also be not unsafe , as opposed to ineffective to older, less robust immune systems. So the idea is that some protection is better than none , but it may well be that additional measures which still impact on the lives of how others would wish to lead might be impacted. I would think its better to do the under 55s, as a good community stop infection that should reduce the community spread to older persons (but not within older persons groups), this is contrary to Hancock's advice and thinking on Question Time tonight, I think the problem is the long covid mental/fatigue effects among younger and middle -aged persons as this is going to sap NHS resources for years particulary in heart specialist units.

For Private hospitals, costs tend to be higher, they are taxed differently, they tend to have more modern facilities and equipment, and the pillows are more fluffy with the staff to patient ratio a bit higher, (and they probably pay their cleaners less ), but to me a marginal excess cash payment (and I thought best mates rates were being charged to the NHS ) seems actually cheaper than the kerfuffle of moving patients back and forth and re-deploying otherwise limited (by Covid) NHS resources, any promise of 'we will do what it takes' remains a political lie.

[Tizer]

This makes it even more important that we should look at where we failed to prevent the spread of covid-19 and prepare better for the future...
`Mutated strain of coronavirus may 'jump back and forth' LINK
`A new coronavirus strain could potentially leap to other animals, such as rats, mice, ferrets and voles, an expert has warned. The virus could then "come back in future years into the human population", said Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust..'.
-----------------------------------------------------------

At the beginning of this pandemic I was reluctant to criticise the government for getting things wrong. It was a completely new virus and we didn't know how it would spread or how dangerous it would be. Time was needed to develop tests and then to put them into action. But all that should have been done before the end of the first lockdown. Now it's clear that not only was the government ill prepared for a pandemic it wasn't capable of making the right decisions and made shocking blunders. One of the most obvious was to allow people to continue flying into the UK when we couldn't even test them and then letting them spread throughout the country without knowing their ultimate locations. Perhaps the worst blunder of all has been the test & trace programme and after all this time it's still far from effective: Nuffield Trust

When I see the large numbers of people getting infected now it puzzles me - with all the guidance, regulations, masks, hand sanitiser etc why are so many people still catching the virus? Obviously there are selfish people out there who simply don't care about getting infected themselves and then passing it to others, and there are asymptomatic ones who aren't visibly affected. But if we are taking all the precautions we shouldn't be catching the virus. I'll offer one possible reason but the rest of you might have your own ideas. We rely heavily on wearing masks but unfortunately they are mostly a lot less effective than we believe. They're often not filtering out all the virus but letting it pass around the sides of the mask. Much of the time we are wearing the masks like people in the past wearing a cross to protect themselves against evil. Most of us are still OK because we socially distance and don't go into crowded, confined spaces but others don't do the same and they're at risk. Also, outside lockdown people have been assuming it was safe to be maskless in pubs, bars, cafes, restaurants and I'm sure that has added to the infections.

[plaques]

Much is being made of the fact that the 'R' appears to be on the decline dropping from 1. 2 range down to 0.9 over the last couple of days. All encouraging stuff but if the rate R = 1 it means that a single currently infected could pass the virus on to another person. Then we are told that there are nearly 25,000 people per day being tested as positive. This would suggest the infection could go on for a long time.

[Stanley]

I agree with all you say in that post Peter. I am sure you are right about the lousy performance of the government particularly on track and trace, the obsession with centralisation and against local health officials is stunning and damaging.
I had to pop into the Co-op in the middle of the day yesterday and was appalled by the behaviour of many of the customers. I shall keep out apart from first thing in the morning in future!

[chinatyke]

[Marilyn]

We have a fresh Covid cluster in South Australia, some 17 victims, all brought about by repatriating people from overseas in quarantine hotel at this stage. Hundreds of “contacts” now in isolation. I think they have caught this early and are on top of the situation, though a large family involved seem to have been quite mobile and quite social.

[Cathy]

It’s a real bummer, we’ve been doing so well since April.
Thank goodness they all went to get tested.

Our state is now on ‘High Alert’ , and back to strict restrictions.

Hopefully it will only be for 2 weeks, but who knows.

No more ‘s for us for a while.

[Marilyn]

I know Cazza, though likely I worry about it more than you think, as we live in a holiday destination. People haven’t been able to holiday internationally, or even interstate at time, so we are an easy reach beach destination suitable for weekends...and a good stop for folk coming over the border in caravans. We don’t go out the house, except to walk, plus a quick supermarket shop in the early hours once a week. We trust no-one....

[Marilyn]

Do you know what this reminds me of...I know it sounds crazy...but does anyone remember the adverts in the 1980s, when they said that when you sleep with a new partner, you are actually sharing the bed with all their previous partners? ( or words to that effect). Scared me half to death even though I was only sleeping with my husband! Scary stuff.
Covid is a bit like that - someone only has to breathe on you or touch something you buy...
( I was referring to AIDS of course...)

[Tizer]

That's a good analogy, Maz. We on OG are scared by covid-19 so we take great care. It's the folk who aren't scared that get infected. They're the same ones who overtake the car ahead on a blind bend and when you tell them it can kill people they say `Well it's never happened to me'. Also like the woman who when I asked her to move her car because it was partly blocking my drive (which is also on a T-junction) she said "I can park anywhere I like" and stormed off in a rage.

The Times had a two-page interview on Saturday with the two owners of the BioNTech firm which developed the covid vaccine that's being manufactured by Pfizer. A fascinating article! They are man and wife, he (Ugur Sahin) the son of a German car worker (of Turkish descent) and she (Ozlem Tureci) the daughter of an Istanbul surgeon. They met while doing research at a university in Germany and set up Ganymed Pharmaceuticals to develop immunotherapeutic cancer drugs based on mRNA. They then set up BioNTech and worked on a new flu vaccine for Pfizer. In January they heard about the virus in Wuhan and immediately realised it would spread worldwide so they stopped the current research and switched to covid-19. They're also experts on T-cells and are investigating how these cells respond to covid. Sahin and Tureci love their work, have offices side by side and spend all their time on research at the moment. The live in a flat with their daughter in Mainz, Germany, don't have a car and cycle everywhere. They're not interested in being rich and want the vaccine to be available worldwide. But don't think the company is two people in a shed - they have 1,500 employees composed of people from 60 different countries!

I noted this comment about vaccines that Sahin made in the interview. We know that the vaccine protects over 90% of those people vaccinated. We don't know - and won't for a long time - whether the vaccinated people will still be able to carry and spread the virus. That's something we're going to have to be very careful about making clear once the vaccines `go public'.

[Stanley]

I heard a long radio piece about that couple and thought it was was fascinating.
I also heard one of our 'brains' talking about the vaccines and he said that he would be happier if the CEOs of the companies weren't going on the media talking about 95% efficiency.
I also heard that the Pfizer vaccine was developed with only internal funding and so nobody has any influence on how it is distributed or priced. Unlike the Moderna one which was funded by the 'Warp Speed' programme. It remains to be seen what effect this has. Depends on how much you trust the private companies I guess.

[Marilyn]

We are under a strict 6 day lockdown.