COVID-19: Vaccine/antidote and testing procedures Megathread [Mod Warning - Post #1]

jackboy wrote: »

There are no vaccines so there cannot be substantive data. All talk about vaccines are opinions only. The date of 2023 is as good a guess as any.

True, some people have lost the run of themselves on here masquerading as Experts on Vaccines...

stephenjmcd wrote: »

Data in terms of current progress, data released so far, the fact that rolling reviews are talking place now and the timeliness being published

There is no approved vaccine. Vaccines are either safe and effective or not. It is black or white. The interim data and timelines are absolutely meaningless.

jackboy wrote: »

There is no approved vaccine. Vaccines are either safe and effective or not. It is black or white. The interim data and timelines are absolutely meaningless.

There's actually a number of approved vaccines currently in use in China and the UAE.
There's also a number in pre-approval analysis by the European Medicines Agency and also in Canada.

ACitizenErased wrote: »

There's actually a number of approved vaccines currently in use in China and the UAE.
There's also a number in pre-approval analysis by the European Medicines Agency and also in Canada.

In your expert opinion, how likely is the Chinese vaccine or Sputnik for that matter likely to get approval from the FDA or EMA? 20% likely?

stephenjmcd wrote: »

Multiple links posted here day in day out of research papers, initial vaccine data and trial data as its released..

Sorry, I have a life and my opinion is as good as anyone else unless they're medical scientists or qualified experts who've read and understood all the complex medical research out there..

ACitizenErased wrote: »

If you've read nothing then you have no right to be arguing with people who have.

When this becomes a medical expert forum with real names and qualifications displayed then I'll certainly agree.

Did anybody have the covid test that resulted in a negative test. But are convinced they had it?

ShineOn7 wrote: »

Realism?

Or more Gloom Porn from the disgrace that is RTE?

https://twitter.com/boucherhayes/status/1311721042927329282

Not one bit surprised to be honest. RTE may claim that it's their duty of responsibility to be realistic and pragmatic but, the truth of it is that they revel in the negativity. The report cited here presents a pretty bleak outlook, but why cherry pick that one instead of the many other more positive (and who's to say more "realistic") reports. There are plenty of eminent scientists, medical experts, doctors, etc. who are projecting more favourable timelines. There was even a story from The Times which suggested a UK rollout timeline of 3 - 6 months next year. But, no, Boucher-Hayes decides to link this story. One would have to question if that decision was based on genuine journalistic integrity or simply an alignment with RTEs negative narrative.

ShineOn7 wrote: »

Realism?

Or more Gloom Porn from the disgrace that is RTE?

https://twitter.com/boucherhayes/status/1311721042927329282

It's just another set of guesswork stats from someone. There's been a whole lot of that going on. As we've seen from our own media, some of them are not above projecting their own issues with COVID!

This is new.

https://www.ft.com/content/d2e00128-7889-4d5d-84a3-43e51355a751

"Ms Bingham said the government was aiming to vaccinate about 30m people, compared with a UK population of about 67m, if a successful vaccine against Covid-19 was found.

“People keep talking about ‘time to vaccinate the whole population’, but that is misguided,” she said. “There’s going to be no vaccination of people under 18. It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable.”
"

hmmm wrote: »

This is new.

https://www.ft.com/content/d2e00128-7889-4d5d-84a3-43e51355a751

"Ms Bingham said the government was aiming to vaccinate about 30m people, compared with a UK population of about 67m, if a successful vaccine against Covid-19 was found.

“People keep talking about ‘time to vaccinate the whole population’, but that is misguided,” she said. “There’s going to be no vaccination of people under 18. It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable.”
"

I highly highly doubt we take that approach

Deleted User wrote: »

Would this be an acknowledgement that it will be endemic, and allowing it to continue spreading in children will help it mutate until a weaker strain dominates and eventually vaccination becomes unnecessary except in high risk groups.

Or a deadlier strain emerges. Seems like a really weird approach to me.

Can someone answer this. Why have we posters especially on the other threads with comments like “ there won’t be a vaccine†“ vaccine is a pipe dream†“ carrot on a stick blah blah “ and yet if you read this thread we have lots of good info that would suggest otherwise. I don’t know what to think anymore, starting to lose faith in the vaccine because of those clueless moronic posters.

hmmm wrote: »

“People keep talking about ‘time to vaccinate the whole population’, but that is misguided,” she said. “There’s going to be no vaccination of people under 18. It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable.”
"

Interesting FT read.

I have read 100's of articles about vaccinations and this is the first article that I have seen that states that any country will not vaccinate those under 18. Is this in line with the approach they will be taking in other countries?

JTMan wrote: »

Interesting FT read.

I have read 100's of articles about vaccinations and this is the first article that I have seen that states that any country will not vaccinate those under 18. Is this in line with the approach they will be taking in other countries?

I was only just speaking to somebody about this recently. I also had seen no mention of the vaccine in under 18s (i.e. contraindicated or otherwise). The normal assumption for a new drug would be that it's paediatric investigations would be only just kicking off around the time the adult treatment is available. Modelling and simulation based on the adult phase 3 studies could enable a starting dose for paediatric studies. With a vaccine apparently coming to market so soon (if one does actually emerge) then the accelerated testing done would not suffice for children. If a vaccine does become available I believe I would opt to take it however I would not want my young children taking it.

hmmm wrote: »

“People keep talking about ‘time to vaccinate the whole population’, but that is misguided,” she said. “There’s going to be no vaccination of people under 18. It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable.”

If that's true it would short sighted for a variety of reasons. Certainly over 50s should have priority but the main spreaders are under 45 so there would be no herd immunity from the vaccine programme. If the virus is still spreading rampantly through the younger half of the population then older people, even those who've been vaccinated are still at risk. As are younger people with health conditions who may not even be able to be vaccinated.


The other reason is that even though younger people are very unlikely to die, Covid triggers post-viral conditions in a relatively high proportion of people. After I recovered from the initial virus I developed pleurisy in one lung, costochondritis, myocarditis, subacute thyroiditis, esophagitis and extremely stubborn esophagial candida (which was both a reaction to some medications and a battered immune system). Over 6 months on and I'm not yet fully recovered though I am mostly back to my old activity levels (which are high, I'm crazy fit). I know a number of people both in real life and through online communities, who were sick at the same time and are not yet fully recovered. Those who have developed post-viral fatigue/CFS are still nowhere close to back to normal. A highly contagious virus which has a long recovery period for even a small percentage of the infected is pretty disastrous and should be vaccinated against as soon as it's possible.

Some further research into future multivalent coronavirus vaccines:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.27.316018v1.full.pdf+html

They were specifically looking at highly preserved T cell epitopes among lots of CoVs, including the endemic hCoVs and a good few of the closer relatives endemic in bats, civets, pangolins and camels. Looks like there is plenty to work with.

Some other interesting tangential finds:

The COVID-19 patients that present severe symptoms had significantly higher frequencies of
ORF1ab1675-1683 and ORF1ab2210-2218 epitopes-specific CD8+ T cells compared to asymptomatic patients (Fig. 10). In contrast, a significantly higher frequencies of S691-699, ORF64-11, and ORF8a31-39 epitope-specific CD8+ T cells were detected in asymptomatic patients and unexposed healthy individuals as compared to COVID-19 patients with moderate to severe symptoms (Fig. 10A).
However, there were no significant correlations between the overall frequencies of SARS-CoV-2-
specific CD8+ T cells and the severity of the COVID-19 disease

That's an interesting find, some differences between mild/asymptomatic and severe in regards to cytotoxic T cells, but nothing of statistical significance.

Moreover, we discovered that, in contrast to SARS-CoV-2 epitopes-specific CD8+ T cells and IgG antibodies, high frequencies of IFN-γ-producing CD4+ T cells specific to 8 highly conserved Coronavirus epitopes, were associated with asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. This suggests that the asymptomatic COVID-19 patients that develop high frequencies of functional IFN-γproducing CD4+ T cells specific to cross-reactive Coronavirus epitopes from structural and non396 structural proteins (Fig. 12), may have been better protected against subsequent severe SARS-CoV-2 infection and/or disease

So a robust CD4+ response is more important than CD8+ against this virus, bit surprising I think. Maybe it's to do with all that interferon they produce?

Finally, we found the symptomatic patients with the most severe symptoms had significantly higher IgG antibodies specific to some linear B-cell epitopes (e.g. S544-578 and S565-598) compared to asymptomatic patients, suggesting some Spike-specific antibodies may not be protective, but instead maybe immune enhancing (Fig. 10E, P < 0.05). No significant correlations was found between the overall Spike-specific antibody responses and the low severity of symptoms in COVID-19 patients (Fig. 10F, P > 0.05)

That might be homing in on the source of the phosphorylated ABs seen in some of the severe/critical cases that cause a highly inflammatory state in the lungs. Just to note, this is unlikely to be of a concern for vaccines, as long they induce a neutralizing response in the recipient. Future vaccine efforts might want to look into this section of the S a bit closer, maybe even modify it to not induce those ABs at all.

stockshares wrote: »

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1313158828184293377?s=19

Really don't know what to think about Trump's "illness" On one hand I consider him capable of the most underhand deeds imaginable, on the other, could he really manage to pull the wool over all the hospital staff who must have been involved? Could you really trust them all to keep it secret in the face of the press offering big bucks to tell all?

ShineOn7 wrote: »

I'm reading on Reddit that convalescent plasma is saving lives in the States

Are we using it here yet?

We've been involved in trials of Convalescent plasma since April.

Not enough evidence has been gathered to approve it as a treatment. What evidence that has been gathered is considered of a low quality by the who.

The blood transfusion service has a system to label blood donations received as convalescent plasma when appropriate.

Marhay70 wrote: »

Really don't know what to think about Trump's "illness" On one hand I consider him capable of the most underhand deeds imaginable, on the other, could he really manage to pull the wool over all the hospital staff who must have been involved? Could you really trust them all to keep it secret in the face of the press offering big bucks to tell all?

I watched the news conference this evening and my guess is he definitely has it, but has had mild symptoms (so far).

Whatever about some of the drugs he's getting, the Regeneron cocktail is being trialed in different settings including as a preventive treatment. So, it doesn't look far fetched that he would be getting these drugs on the same basis, ie to prevent a mild infection from worsening.

The medics as good as admitted though that he could be back in hospital any time over the next seven days if his condition worsens suddenly.