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Russia is indeed doing rather badly – and probably much worse than the official stats suggest. In fact, the more reliable ‘excess mortality’ stands at over half a million since the start of the pandemic, with only around 40% of that figure attributed to covid.
The other stat to bear in mind is that only a fifth to a quarter of the adult population is fully vaccinated, although there are now moves to make vaccines mandatory in parts of the country, including Moscow. Evidence suggests that the SputnikV is at least as effective as any other, but vaccine ‘hesitancy’ is rife – for various reasons.
Nice to see you again Steph. I hope all is well and thanks for the links.
I’ve not been looking at Russia closely but now that I look at excess mortality it appears they escaped the excess mortality of the first wave but in subsequent waves they had higher excess mortality compared to European countries, UK and Ireland.
https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
SputnikV vaccine is still under review by both the EMA and MHRA and I am not sure if that’s because of politics or a failure on the part of the manufacturers. Not that it is required as urgently now (in EU/UK/Ireland) because it seems most of these countries have enough vaccine supply. I am sure it’s needed elsewhere in the world. I read that Ireland has an available supply chain of 17 million plus vaccine doses with a population of 5 million approx and most already vaccinated. I’m not sure how I feel about that.I am afraid I can not fully understand this
“Sanofi said the read-out encouraged it only to pursue the technology as a potential vaccine against influenza and other diseases, giving up on the area of COVID-19 because of the strong market presence of the two approved mRNA shots.”
– “I am afraid I can not fully understand this”
Neither can I. I expect it doesn’t quite make sense. I think “read-out” should read “results”.
As best I can work out, Sanofi were developing three types of vaccines – mRNA vaccines against covid-19, mRNA vaccines against seasonal ‘flu, and an “adjuvanted recombinant protein vaccine” against covid-19.
Of these three, they decided to drop the mRNA vaccine against covid-19, “because of the strong market presence of the two approved mRNA shots” – ie. their Phase I/II results indicate that their mRNA vaccine against covid-19 has no decisive advantage over the existing ones from Pfizer and Moderna, so they’re concentrating their resources on their other two approaches instead.
20 Jul 2021
“Europe’s drug regulator said on Tuesday it had started a real-time review of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by French drugmaker Sanofi and the UK’s GlaxoSmithKline, the fifth shot currently under such a review.
The decision to start the “rolling review” of the vaccine, Vidprevtyn, was based on preliminary results from lab studies and early stage clinical trials in adults, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/20/eu-begins-real-time-review-of-sanofi-gsk-covid-19-vaccine
The agency’s rolling reviews are aimed at speeding up the approval process by allowing researchers to submit findings in real time before final trial data is available.Sanofi said other rolling reviews of its vaccine were also about to start in the UK, Canada and Singapore, as well as with the World Health Organization.
Vidprevtyn uses the same technology as one of Sanofi’s seasonal influenza vaccines. It will be coupled with an adjuvant, a substance that acts as a booster to the shot, made by GSK.
The four vaccines with EMA authorisation in the EU are Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
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[ Mod: Once again you fail to distinguish between quotations and your own comments. A check reveals that all of these sentences (both above and below the URL) are quoted directly from the linked news article. ]Is it not a bit late to be developing covid vaccines in/for Europe?
About three quarters of the population of Europe has already been vaccinated.
There must be about a dozen vaccines world wide that are currently being used to prevent covid?
Would it not make more sense to tweak a proven covid vaccine, so it targets Delta?I don’t know how much of a tweak can be made without necessitating that a vaccine must go through the whole validation process again beginning with phase one clinical trials. The flu vaccine is altered on a yearly basis but that is only altering the already verified constituents of it. If a change is made to the actual antigenic part of a vaccine that would have to be shown to work and not signficantly increase side effects and/or complications.
“Is it not a bit late to be developing covid vaccines in/for Europe?”
Competition is healthy. The more vaccines available the cheaper they may become and I don’t think they have only Europe in mind. The EMA is the regulatory agency involved for Europe but I assume they are applying to other regulatory agencies around the globe.
ET
in the United Kingdom we were quick off the starting blocks designing a covid vaccine and then deploying.
Why does the U.K. currently have the second highest daily number of covid cases in the world, after the U.S.A.Although ET and Clark have attempted to explain to me, I still can not get it.
The U.K. has the second highest covid deaths in Europe, after Russia |¦|
but Russia is a vast country with a much bigger population, but Russia also have less deaths per million.Putting Russia to one side, the U.K. seems to be the stand out bad boy.
More deaths and a ludicrously high daily rate of covid positive cases, yet we rolled out vaccination, first.So, why are we seeing daily positive cases in the U.K. multiple times higher than in other E.U. countries?
Michael, I don’t know the answer to your question. In different countries there are different degrees of testing, and tests are targeted in different ways. There are different proportions of the population vaccinated, with different vaccines. There are differences in population density, social behaviour, and numbers of people sharing accommodation.
I take little notice of differences of a factor of five and less, because differences of a factor of fifty and more are quite common.
The countries of Eastern Europe are taking off like rockets.
Look at Romania, as an example.Numbers are going up fast because the number of people infected is large.
https://twitter.com/vb_jens/status/1372251931444350976
Exponential growth has that characteristic shape in the cartoon linked above, but the growth rate as a proportion is constant throughout. The left-hand end of the graph looks tame whereas the right-hand end looks very scary, but it’s all the same rate of growth, eg:
1 person infects 2
2 people infect 4
4 people infect 8
8 people infect 16…
32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768…The absolute numbers go up faster and faster, but it’s always doubling each cycle.
If you’re interested enough, you could check the growth rate over time. Take this week’s figure and divide by last week’s. Then take last week’s and divide by the week before, and so on. The results are weekly growth rates; see how they vary.
For a finer-grained inspection you can take today’s (ie. Saturday’s) figure, and divide by last Saturday’s. Then take yesterday’s figure and divide by last Friday’s. Then Thursdays, etc. etc. You again get weekly growth rates, but rolling day by day.
Or you can do it the other way around. Look at today’s infection figure, and then see how many days you have to go back for it to halve. Then do the same for yesterday, or last week.
Covid multiplies like crazy. I bet a lot of it is the weather getting colder and wetter making people congregate indoors and closing the windows, sharing air.
Reported by the FT and other news outlets:
“The chief executive of the biotech behind the first Covid-19 vaccine has said a new formulation is likely to be needed by the middle of next year to protect against the virus as it mutates.”
Referring to the current situation:
“Booster shots seem able to tackle the main variants, Sahin said. But the virus will eventually develop mutations that can escape the immune response bestowed by the vaccine, he said, necessitating a “tailored” version to specifically target the new strain.
“This virus will stay, and the virus will further adapt,” he said. “We have no reason to assume that the next generation virus will be easier to handle for the immune system than the existing generation. This is a continuous evolution, and that evolution has just started.”
Continuous revenue for the forseeable future.
One of the last proponents of an elimination strategy New Zealand abandons plans for zero Covid. Sars-Cov-2 has beaten all countries’ attempts to eliminate it. What a shame, I feel a degree of sadness about this and hope the mitigation strategy doesn’t come back to bite us all. Hope for the best…………
There’s still China, four Australian territories, and a number of islands I think. China in particular is nearly a fifth of the global population.
I am really confused and my thinking is like this;
Vaccinated people do get infected and can infect others
so
Vaccination will not stop spreading but so far research points out that symptoms are less bad!Most westerners countries are going with that hope but NZ gave up test/trace/isolate of 2000 people and are going
To implement Vaxx program in which many would not participate. In other words we have a problem to isolate 2000
people but are fine with 10%-30% not to be vaccinated.
Following video makes me think who takes it seriously
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-setQxHwKgIt is CEO of Huawei reception on her return home.
a) person handing flowers has full PPE(Hazmat suit)
b) It looks like to me that all present have “proper masks”( N95 or N99)
I think the United Kingdom has plumped for Herd Immunity.
A Lancet paper detailing analysis of Pfizer vaccinated people in California is highly suggestive that effectiveness at preventing infection wanes to 47% after 5 months though effectiveness against hospital admissions for infections with the delta variant for all ages was high overall (93% [95% CI 84–96]) up to 6 months.
A potential limitation of the study, however, was a lack of data on adherence to masking guidelines and occupations in the study population, which could have affected frequency of testing and likelihood of exposure to the virus. That’s why I stated highly suggestive.
It might explain the high numbers of infections in UK as one of the consequences of the earlier roll-out would be that more people are at the point where the effectiveness against infection (not hospital admission) has waned. Unlucky for the UK (and other early adopter countries) if that is the case. Might also mean those countries that vaccinated later have an increase in case numbers coming.
A strong case for booster doses (which are being rolled out in UK for some).
* Read the “Declaration of interests” towards the bottom of the paper, it was funded by Pfizer and other pharma companies AND the authors received research support from Pfizer during the conduct of this study that was paid directly to KPSC (a health care provider in USA).
I don’t necessarily think the findings are suspect and are highly likely to be accurate but it is important to see who funded and supported the study especially as it will lead to more sales.
Pigeon English, Oct 4, 19:14:
– “Vaccinated people do get infected and can infect others.”
The current covid vaccines are what are known as “leaky vaccines”. By applying selection pressure they can encourage resistant strains. From 2015:
Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens:
Plos Biology, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198Two authors of that paper, including the lead author, write in The Conversation:
Virus evolution could undermine a COVID-19 vaccine – but this can be stopped
– “The first drug against HIV brought dying patients back from the brink. But as excited doctors raced to get the miracle drug to new patients, the miracle melted away. In each and every patient, the drug only worked only for a while.
– Could the same thing happen to a COVID-19 vaccine? Could a vaccine that is safe and effective in initial trials go on to fail because the virus evolves its way out of trouble? As evolutionary microbiologists who have studied a poultry virus that has evolved resistance to two different vaccines,” (the paper linked above) “we know such an outcome is possible. We also think we know what it takes to stop it. COVID-19 vaccines could fail – but if they have certain properties, they won’t.”
The current vaccines have none of the “certain properties” described.
That article also mentions viruses, including HIV, entering a “stealth mode”:
– “It would be better for human health, for example, if the virus evolves a stealth mode, perhaps by reproducing slowly or hiding in organs where immunity is less active.”
Considering HIV, I do not understand the writers’ optimism that this would probably “be better for human health”. SARS-CoV-2 is already known to have stealth modes, one of them in nerve cells and brain tissue – this is why loss of sense of smell is a symptom of covid:
Here’s Why COVID-19 Is Much Worse Than Flu – Infection Control Today
(Note: Infection Control Today is a commercial “trade” healthcare magazine, not a peer-reviewed journal.)
– “Clinically, SARS-CoV-2 combines some of the properties of the seasonal flu plus HIV. Similar to the seasonal flu, SARS-CoV-2 can primarily attack the lungs. But ACE2 receptors are everywhere. Similar to HIV, the virus can also enter a stealth mode, silently spreading throughout the host’s body and attacking almost every organ, especially those with a high ACE2 receptor concentration. And similar to HIV, SARS-CoV-2 also frequently causes asymptomatic spread. In full stealth mode, SARS-CoV-2 can asymptomatically attack the vasculature and heart. Myocarditis can occur and the patient is totally unaware of the damage, until an arrhythmia or symptomatic myocarditis develops. In young asymptomatic patients, this is not an uncommon sequela.
– SARS-CoV-2 targeting the cardiovascular system of the body should be a given. It has been known for a long time that ACE receptors are involved in cardiovascular regulation. […] Thus, there are multiple presentations of SARS-CoV-2 including pulmonary, cardiac, gastrointestinal (GI), and central nervous system (CNS).
– Recently, there has been mounting evidence regarding the CNS effects of SARS-CoV-2. As early as July 2020, scientists were sounding the alarm regarding COVID-19 brain damage: Including temporary brain dysfunction, strokes, nerve damage and brain inflammation.”
The article also points to a systematic review and meta-study (the highest levels of evidence in medical research) finding that the three most common long-term symptoms of covid-19 all suggest damage to nerve cells – of which the brain is of course composed.
Airborne brain damage anyone? Covid-19 has not been and is not being taken nearly seriously enough by the world’s governments. So we have to protect ourselves.
U.K. seems to be going mental with covid, over 40,000 new cases on Thursday, way, wasy more than anyone else in Europe?
Not sure what is happening with Germany. They did seem to have rather low figures for covid positive and deaths, however, they shot up like a skyrocket, yesterday.
Germany = 22,403 new cases
Germany = 411 new deaths.The U.K. figures make grim reading.
U.K. = 40,701 new cases
U.K. = 122 new deathsIt is not over yet and the Autumn weather is still hot and sunny.
A piece in the Guardian reflects some of the questions asked in this thread, Why is England doing worse against Covid than its European neighbours?.
“While each country is doing its own version there are some common elements. Face coverings and vaccine passports remain widespread across western Europe. Anyone who has visited France over the summer will have seen the routine use of the TousAntiCovid app in bars and restaurants. Masks are required in indoor public spaces and public transport in France, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Spain and elsewhere. Yet in England these measures will only be implemented if the government moves to its “Plan B”.”
“Many countries have also made major investments in ventilation and filtration, while some have made CO2 monitors compulsory in certain settings, such as hospitality venues.”
I don’t want to quote the whole article and I don’t know that they are correct as to the reasons but it is worth considering.
michael, maybe you should check the weather reports, public holidays etc. – things that affect social behaviour. What drove Germans indoors in the last week?
Personally, social behaviour is all too complex and convoluted for me to address. Most governments have abandoned social control measures and put all our eggs into the vaccination basket. But we know what works on the levels that we can affect – get vaccinated, ventilate, avoid groups in enclosed spaces, look after our general health.
07/10/2021
Germany = 22,403 new cases
Germany = 411 new deaths. This is what they said yesterday, it has been changed
so today, for yesterday they are now claiming
+22,403 new cases
94,585 total deaths
+86 new deathsMaybe some of the dead came back to life?
This socioeconomic view of Long Covid is rather frightening.
https://www.rt.com/shows/alex-salmond-show/536732-long-covid-trade-impact/From these two experts of economics on the Alex Salmond show, they seem to imagine that the long term effects of covid on the World Economy will be a greater loss than the critical stage. People are frightened, people have committed suicide, more people have experienced mental episodes and many will not get back to full economic activity soon or perhaps ever.
Big impact especially in physical jobs, such as construction.
