Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #101

[jjenny]

That is what I thought.

I feel a lot safer with a booster.

 

[ilovewings]

I feel a lot safer with a booster.

I am looking forward to getting that booster- it is seven months since my 2nd shot

 

[jjenny]

This for Pfizer, but there is no reason to believe the same won't happen with Moderna.
"On Thursday, Pfizer released data from a study of more than 10,000 fully vaccinated people. Half were randomized to get a booster of their Cominarty vaccine, the other half were given a placebo. Over the next 2.5 months, there were 5 COVID-19 cases in the boosted group, and 109 in the group that got a placebo. The data was posted in a press release and has not yet been peer reviewed, but it is the first to show clinical effectiveness of boosters at preventing COVID-19 infections."

CDC OKs COVID Boosters for Nearly All Adults, Mixing Vaccines (webmd.com)

 

[ilovewings]

This for Pfizer, but there is no reason to believe the same won't happen with Moderna.
"On Thursday, Pfizer released data from a study of more than 10,000 fully vaccinated people. Half were randomized to get a booster of their Cominarty vaccine, the other half were given a placebo. Over the next 2.5 months, there were 5 COVID-19 cases in the boosted group, and 109 in the group that got a placebo. The data was posted in a press release and has not yet been peer reviewed, but it is the first to show clinical effectiveness of boosters at preventing COVID-19 infections."

CDC OKs COVID Boosters for Nearly All Adults, Mixing Vaccines (webmd.com)

I have confidence that the booster will provide increased protection from the virus.
I do wonder how often we will need to get boosters in the future.

 

[SouthAussie]

A failed attempt to circumvent mandatory vaccination .... AFAIK this is among the first of any test cases here in Australia.


A group of Queensland Police Service (QPS) employees' legal bid to defy their Commissioner's direction to be vaccinated for COVID19 has failed.

The full bench of Queensland's Industrial Relation Commission (QIRC) rejected submissions that Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll had no power to mandate compulsory vaccinations, did not consult staff and infringed upon workers' rights.

The court's decision means the 60 applicants of police and civilian employees would have to choose whether to be vaccinated or suspended without pay and/or dismissal.

Queensland Police Service employees lose legal bid against mandatory COVID jab

 

[sds71]

Pfizer says COVID-19 vaccine more than 90% effective in kids

 

[KALI]

We are going to sign up for the 3rd shot. I refuse to call it a booster shot because that's what <modsnip> named it. As far as I'm concerned it's our third shot within 7 months.
We most certainly want to know if we can go back to a normal life if we take this 3rd shot within 7 months.
Nobody that I've heard, has said "Hey, 3rd times the charm!" Carry on as before Covid.
If any of you have heard words to that effect from educated, reliable doctors, we are All ears! Thank You,

 

[GRT]

NIH Admits to Funding Gain-of-Function Research in Wuhan, Says EcoHealth Violated Reporting Requirements

A top NIH official admitted in a Wednesday letter that U.S. taxpayers funded gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan and revealed that EcoHealth Alliance, the U.S. non-profit that funneled NIH money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was not transparent about the work it was doing.

In the letter to Representative James Comer (R., Ky.), Lawrence A. Tabak of the NIH cites a “limited experiment” that was conducted to test if “spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.” The laboratory mice infected with the modified bat virus “became sicker” than those infected with the unmodified bat virus.

Dr. Richard Ebright, biosafety expert and professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, had previously rebutted Fauci’s claim that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV]” as “demonstrably false.”

Ebright told National Review that the NIH-financed work at the WIV “epitomizes” the definition of gain-of-function research, which deals with “enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (PPP)” or those pathogens “resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen.”

Gain-of-Function Research -- NIH Admits to Funding Research in Wuhan | National Review

This is not surprising. Scientists came right out and said Peter Daszak of EcoHealth pressured them into agreeing with him in the original letter published by the Lancet.

Now, EcoHealth has five days to turn over the data.

I know scientists disagree on whether GoF testing is more dangerous to the public than it is beneficial, and after we've seen how devastating a virus can be--I think we at least need to pause the study until we can ensure it can be done in a 100% safe way.

Knowing Daszak misled the public doesn't necessarily mean Covid was created in a lab. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but I think we need an international moratorium on GoF research for now.

And, I think Daszak should step down.

 

[nightowl1975]

We are going to sign up for the 3rd shot. I refuse to call it a booster shot because that's what <modsnip> named it. As far as I'm concerned it's our third shot within 7 months.
We most certainly want to know if we can go back to a normal life if we take this 3rd shot within 7 months.
Nobody that I've heard, has said "Hey, 3rd times the charm!" Carry on as before Covid.
If any of you have heard words to that effect from educated, reliable doctors, we are All ears! Thank You,

I think it’s natural for everyone to want to know what to expect going forward. However, if covid has taught us nothing else, perhaps the lesson in being adaptable as we learn more is one of the most significant.

NOBODY, no matter how smart, how well-educated, how high up in the medical community or political realm, can tell us with any huge degree of certainty if this third shot will be the last (doubtful) or how often we will need additional doses (my guess is yearly for a while once the dust settles) or when the world might go back to “normal”.

Wanting answers is normal. However, there are no answers. We just don’t know. It’s impossible to know how the third shot will work over time for a virus that didn’t exist two years ago. I’ve found it’s a waste of mental energy to stay upset or angry over this uncertainty. It cannot be helped. Or fixed. Or changed. It just is. And it’s not going to go away.

 

[Betty P]

Nurse explains why she won't get COVID-19 vaccine

Oct. 17—On Monday, nurse Michele Brown won't be working in the emergency department of Asante Ashland Community Hospital.

Instead, she'll be on administrative leave for refusing to follow a state mandate that all Oregon health care and K-12 school workers and volunteers be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 18 or seek a medical or religious exception.

Brown said Asante granted her a religious exception, but the accommodation it gave her was to place her on administrative leave.

"I love what I do. I don't love it enough to sacrifice my medical freedom," said Brown, who has decades of experience as a nurse.

Brown said she's not an anti-vaxxer. She's been vaccinated against other infectious illnesses, including the flu. She also doesn't deny that COVID-19 is real. She's seen the suffering of hospital patients with COVID-19.

Brown said people with underlying health problems should get vaccinated against COVID-19. But she said her healthy lifestyle and years of exposure to germs and viruses at the hospital have given her a strong immune system.

To her knowledge, Brown said she hasn't had COVID-19 herself.

She believes she's at such low risk of serious consequences from COVID-19 that, for her, it's not worth facing potential risks from vaccination.

Brown said she's not willing to get injected with COVID-19 vaccines because they use technology that is new for vaccinations.

Brown pointed to the example of a botched dengue fever vaccination program in the Philippines as an example of the risk of new vaccines.

Brown said she thinks it's too early to tell if COVID-19 vaccines will cause long-term harm.

"Three years from now, I hope I'm totally wrong and there are no untoward effects. I'm not willing to take those risks," she said.

She fears a COVID-19 vaccination could change how her body responds to viruses in the future in unpredictable ways.

Some have said people should accept personal responsibility for not getting vaccinated by staying home and not going to the hospital if they get severely ill. Others have said hospitals should prioritize patients who need surgery for cancer and other serious illnesses and turn away unvaccinated COVID-19 patients if there aren't enough hospital beds and staff to care for everyone.

Brown said hospitals provide care all the time to people who smoke, abuse drugs and alcohol, don't eat healthy food, don't exercise and make other harmful lifestyle decisions.

Do these people not understand how highly contagious diseases and pandemics are a much higher risk to the general public than people who get sick from poor health habits? Are they really that dumb or do they just think everyone else is?

 

[Betty P]

This is not surprising. Scientists came right out and said Peter Daszak of EcoHealth pressured them into agreeing with him in the original letter published by the Lancet.

Now, EcoHealth has five days to turn over the data.

I know scientists disagree on whether GoF testing is more dangerous to the public than it is beneficial, and after we've seen how devastating a virus can be--I think we at least need to pause the study until we can ensure it can be done in a 100% safe way.

Knowing Daszak misled the public doesn't necessarily mean Covid was created in a lab. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but I think we need an international moratorium on GoF research for now.

And, I think Daszak should step down.

From what I've read, it also doesn't seem organizations like EcoHealth should be allowed to do research on highly communicable diseases. They're not an actual medical research facility, not like one linked to a university, medical institute, etc. In the past, medical research on highly contagious viruses could only be handled by a limited number of highly specialized research institutes who were subjected to regular inspection and reporting requirements. Not some non-profit group that studies wild animals. Let's raise that research regulation bar back up again.

In other news, it looks like the vaccination research labs are staying up to date on COVID 19 mutations and are on the alert to develop new vaccines for new variations. If a new variant comes along that needs a vaccine, they claim they can produce, test and have one ready for the public in 100 days. That's really pretty fast, considering they have to test them in clinical trials.

COVID vaccine makers brace for a variant worse than Delta

Over the past few months, all three companies have been running dress rehearsals by practising on known SARS-CoV-2 variants. This involves updating their vaccines to match variants such as Beta and Delta, testing them in clinical studies, tuning their internal workflows and coordinating with regulators. Their goal is to learn from these warm-up trials and smooth out kinks in their processes, so that they can move fast if, or when, a true escape variant emerges.

“At some point, inevitably, we’re going to have to make variant vaccines — if vaccines are the way population immunity will be maintained — but we’re not at the point where we can confidently predict the evolution of the virus,” says Paul Bieniasz, a virologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City. “Practising with existing variants seems like a reasonable approach.”

Moderna and Pfizer can come up with new vaccines in a few days. The rest of the time involves testing.

So pharma companies are doing dry runs. Pfizer, with its partner BioNTech, based in Mainz, Germany, is testing a Beta-specific RNA vaccine in a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial with up to 930 participants. In August, the companies began a trial of a multivalent vaccine that targets both the Delta and Alpha variants.“We’re not doing that because we actually think we need a new vaccine for those strains,” says Philip Dormitzer, vice-president and chief scientific officer of viral vaccines and mRNA at Pfizer, based in New York City. “We want to practise all aspects of executing a strain change — the preclinical research, the manufacturing, the clinical testing and the regulatory submissions — so that if we do see a variant out there that truly escapes vaccine immunity, we’re ready to go fast.”

It's going to be difficult/impossible to do randomized controlled trials on new vaccines that are developed because so many people have already been vaccinated against the first strains of COVID 19.

They'll then do immunogenicity studies. Those are the studies that test how much of an immune response is generated by the new vaccine when it's given to someone, compared to someone who hasn't had the new vaccine. It's measured by increases in antibody or B-cell levels.

Immunogenicity studies would measure the immune responses triggered by variant vaccines — for instance, an increase in antibody or B-cell levels — and compare those with the effects of the first-generation vaccine. That seems to be where some vaccine makers are heading: on the basis of guidance from European regulators, AstraZeneca will use this approach in its Beta-vaccine trial.

Moderna is also focusing on immunogenicity data, and is collaborating with a hospital system in southern California to collect real-world data on vaccine effectiveness. In these observational studies, participants can choose whether they get a vaccine or not, and researchers monitor the two groups to see how they fare. Such studies “aren’t perfect”, concedes Miller, because the two groups might have different behaviours and risk factors.

I'm glad they're doing these dry runs to ensure they'll be ready to develop and deploy new vaccines if new strains develop. I've had the booster and new variants are the problem you start worrying about after that.

JMO, it's also important to start educating the public about what's being done now in anticipation of a new COVID strain that needs a new vaccine. It should be effective in preventing people spreading a lot of misinformation and paranoia if its necessary to develop a new vaccine.

 

[Lilibet]

I think it’s natural for everyone to want to know what to expect going forward. However, if covid has taught us nothing else, perhaps the lesson in being adaptable as we learn more is one of the most significant.

NOBODY, no matter how smart, how well-educated, how high up in the medical community or political realm, can tell us with any huge degree of certainty if this third shot will be the last (doubtful) or how often we will need additional doses (my guess is yearly for a while once the dust settles) or when the world might go back to “normal”.

Wanting answers is normal. However, there are no answers. We just don’t know. It’s impossible to know how the third shot will work over time for a virus that didn’t exist two years ago. I’ve found it’s a waste of mental energy to stay upset or angry over this uncertainty. It cannot be helped. Or fixed. Or changed. It just is. And it’s not going to go away.

Thank you. Well said. As I’ve said repeatedly, this is a NOVEL (i.e.new) coronavirus, so it is uncharted territory. To expect scientists to speak with certainly and allay all of our concerns and answer all of our questions is totally unrealistic. As you said, being angry and upset about this uncertainty is a waste of mental energy. Learning to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty is a good goal in life, not just in connection with Covid-19.
JMO

 

[TootsieFootsie]

Anti-vaxx groups' claims about Covid deaths among the vaccinated are misleading

 

[KALI]

73 year old Hubby told me this morning that he's not going to get the 3rd shot. Stating that this will just keep going on every 6 months AND that he's healthy.
Although he eats clean, works out daily and is stronger then most at his age, he did have major open heart surgery 3 years ago, where he nearly died.
He is front and center at our restaurant dealing with up to 30 plus people face to face daily. Since his second shot in March, he will not wear a mask.
A few times here, I've stated my anger towards this virus, to then be somewhat chastised that it's fruitless to feel anger and to just accept that what is, is what is and roll with it.
To each his own. I, personally am very angry that this virus has been unleashed upon this earth.
I will always hate ANY virus that kills millions of people. No apologies from me for my feelings...

I think it’s natural for everyone to want to know what to expect going forward. However, if covid has taught us nothing else, perhaps the lesson in being adaptable as we learn more is one of the most significant.

NOBODY, no matter how smart, how well-educated, how high up in the medical community or political realm, can tell us with any huge degree of certainty if this third shot will be the last (doubtful) or how often we will need additional doses (my guess is yearly for a while once the dust settles) or when the world might go back to “normal”.

Wanting answers is normal. However, there are no answers. We just don’t know. It’s impossible to know how the third shot will work over time for a virus that didn’t exist two years ago. I’ve found it’s a waste of mental energy to stay upset or angry over this uncertainty. It cannot be helped. Or fixed. Or changed. It just is. And it’s not going to go away.

 

[ilovewings]

73 year old Hubby told me this morning that he's not going to get the 3rd shot. Stating that this will just keep going on every 6 months AND that he's healthy.
Although he eats clean, works out daily and is stronger then most at his age, he did have major open heart surgery 3 years ago, where he nearly died.
He is front and center at our restaurant dealing with up to 30 plus people face to face daily. Since his second shot in March, he will not wear a mask.
A few times here, I've stated my anger towards this virus, to then be somewhat chastised that it's fruitless to feel anger and to just accept that what is, is what is and roll with it.
To each his own. I, personally am very angry that this virus has been unleashed upon this earth.
I will always hate ANY virus that kills millions of people. No apologies from me for my feelings...

I don't want to get the third shot because I am always afraid of an allergic reaction, not because I don't think the vaccine is safe. The vaccine has proven it is safe. But because I am elderly I will get that booster- not to do so would be foolish and I am no fool. I had no allergic reaction to the first two shots so I would not expect an allergic reaction but one never knows since I have allergies to lots of things. I would also prefer to get the shot in a medical setting like I did the first two- but I don't think
shots are being given in a medical setting (for boosters) so I will have to go to a pharmacy and I really don't like that idea a whole lot.

 

[Lilibet]

I don't want to get the third shot because I am always afraid of an allergic reaction, not because I don't think the vaccine is safe. The vaccine has proven it is safe. But because I am elderly I will get that booster- not to do so would be foolish and I am no fool. I had no allergic reaction to the first two shots so I would not expect an allergic reaction but one never knows since I have allergies to lots of things. I would also prefer to get the shot in a medical setting like I did the first two- but I don't think
shots are being given in a medical setting (for boosters) so I will have to go to a pharmacy and I really don't like that idea a whole lot.

My doctor’s office is giving the booster @ilovewings. That’s where I will go in November. You might check with yours.

 

[MimosaMornings]

I don't want to get the third shot because I am always afraid of an allergic reaction, not because I don't think the vaccine is safe. The vaccine has proven it is safe. But because I am elderly I will get that booster- not to do so would be foolish and I am no fool. I had no allergic reaction to the first two shots so I would not expect an allergic reaction but one never knows since I have allergies to lots of things. I would also prefer to get the shot in a medical setting like I did the first two- but I don't think
shots are being given in a medical setting (for boosters) so I will have to go to a pharmacy and I really don't like that idea a whole lot.

Pick a pharmacy location close to your doctor’s office. After you get your booster scheduled, call your doctor’s office and schedule an appointment to get checked out right after the shot?
Maybe for peace of mind?

 

[GRT]

In other news, it looks like the vaccination research labs are staying up to date on COVID 19 mutations and are on the alert to develop new vaccines for new variations. If a new variant comes along that needs a vaccine, they claim they can produce, test and have one ready for the public in 100 days. That's really pretty fast, considering they have to test them in clinical trials.

COVID vaccine makers brace for a variant worse than Delta

SBM
BBM

That's impressive, and it eases a lot of worry about whether a variant could do similar damage as the Alpha virus.

I wonder if this is how researchers create the annual flu vaccines? Does each vaccine--every year--go through the same testing?

I never really thought about it before.

 

[weepingangel]

If your state doesn’t do clinics check your hospital systems. Ours run offsite clinics for civilians Eta-I would personally feel safe with the medical precautions in place etc. at ours.
Are they not available at drs offices ?

I’ve wanted to catch up with the plans for upcoming vaxxing of the kiddos. But am a few days behind reading much news. Later today for sure.

I don't want to get the third shot because I am always afraid of an allergic reaction, not because I don't think the vaccine is safe. The vaccine has proven it is safe. But because I am elderly I will get that booster- not to do so would be foolish and I am no fool. I had no allergic reaction to the first two shots so I would not expect an allergic reaction but one never knows since I have allergies to lots of things. I would also prefer to get the shot in a medical setting like I did the first two- but I don't think
shots are being given in a medical setting (for boosters) so I will have to go to a pharmacy and I really don't like that idea a whole lot.

 

[Only4Justice]

Hi my WS Friends. Can someone answer a question I have? Not being political, but how is a mandate for vaccinations legal? Is there something written? All I saw was a press conference.

I am vaccinated, but waiting to see what my employer will do (10,000 employees).

TIA