Covid-19: Treatments, Cures, and Vaccines

Moderna 50% dose option would certainly accelerate things. I wonder if they are running these dosing tests on the pfizer and oxford vaccines

U.S. may cut some Moderna vaccine doses in half to speed rollout, official says | Reuters

(Reuters) - The U.S. government is considering giving some people half the dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in order to speed vaccinations, a federal official said on Sunday.

Moncef Slaoui, head of Operation Warp Speed, the federal vaccine program, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that officials were in talks with Moderna and the Food and Drug Administration about the idea. Moderna’s vaccine requires two injections.

“We know that for the Moderna vaccine, giving half of the dose to people between the ages of 18 and 55, two doses, half the dose, which means exactly achieving the objective of immunizing double the number of people with the doses we have,” Slaoui said.

“We know it induces identical immune response” to the full dose, he added.

 

I would like to see the study showing that before I sign up for it.

 

I find that impossible to believe, because why would they just not reduce the volume of the "full dose" and get more shots per vial in the first place then?

Apparently the FDA does not think that this is a good idea either:

COVID-19 tracker: AstraZeneca vaccine wins emergency nod in Mexico; Israel authorizes Moderna shot, eyeing January delivery

 

Ocugen, and its partners in India, have developed a vaccine candidate based upon very traditional inactivated virus. There have been strong anti-body responses thus far in Phase1/2 trials with no reported safety issues. The vaccine candidate is in Phase 3 trials in India with a group of 26,000 people.

Ocugen and Bharat Biotech to Co-Develop COVAXIN™, a Whole-Virion Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine, for the US Market | Ocugen, Inc.

 

35 pages of treatments, cures and vaccines and it's only the huge, big pharma money making vaccines that have been all the governments focus. Funny how that works.

 

Thru Dec 22nd, the CDC reports fewer than 1 million doses of Covid vaccine with 307 reports of ER visits and 17 "life threatening" events. In 2019-2020, 175 million flu vaccine doses were administered and had 1220 ER visits along with 73 "life threatening" events. The Covid vaccine is causing about 50 times more adverse reactions as the Flu vaccine. Here is the data to peruse. And the issue is most getting the vaccine are healthy young people. Not sure what will happen when we focus on the elderly.

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) Request


I did get my mom vaccinated. She's 79 and has underlying conditions. She had a slight fever afterwards but is fine now. It's worth the risk for her obviously. I think younger people should think twice about taking this vaccine until more data is available.

 

When you attempt to vaccinate the entire population with an unknown vaccination amidst some of the worst political divide vaccines because of the politicization of the virus and treatments, I can almost guarantee that the number of unverified adverse events it going to be much, much higher. Everything from real incidents and actual medical problems, to the psychosomatic reactions from people "forced" to get the shot and people intentionally sabotaging the vaccine programs are likely entering data into this system since there is zero control over the inputs.

As a pre-diabetic, I would take the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine shot tomorrow if I qualified, but I do not and I am pretty low on the priority list. So, there will be several more months of data available before anyone asks me if I want a shot. BTW, if they came to me and told me that the AstraZeneca shot was available right now (it is not in the US), one which has had a disproportionately number of "easily explained adverse events" , I would probably walk away at this point while more data is collected.

I do not fault or negatively view anyone for being wary and cautious at this point. Like most, I would like a lot more data collected on vaccine interactions with different people, conditions, medications, etc, etc....however, I am willing to go make myself part of the largest vaccine trial in history when my slot is available.

 

India approved Covaxin for emergency use so getting stage 3 efficacy results should not be a problem. hopefully they publish ph 3 data soon

Covaxin approval row: How India approves vaccines explained - Coronavirus Outbreak News (indiatoday.in)

The restricted emergency approval given to a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech on January 3 has created a huge furore with several experts questioning the government's decision. Bharat Biotech had sought permission for its vaccine, Covaxin -- a Whole Virion Inactivated Corona Virus Vaccine that it has developed in collaboration with the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune.

The approval was restricted and conditional with Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan declaring that those receiving the Covaxin shots would be monitored the same way as volunteers are in clinical trials. A number of domain experts have expressed surprise over the decision pointing out that the data related to clinical trials of Covaxin have not been made public.

 

I'd take that with a grain of salt. I was given a pamphlet asking me to enroll in VAERS after I got my first shot, which I did. They send me a daily text giving me a link to a site where I can report any symptoms, and then weekly after the first week.

I had never even heard of this system before this and I get my flu shot every year, nor do I know of anyone who's ever done this, and I obviously know a lot of people who keep their vaccines up to date. I think it's fairly apparent from the difference in data collection that you can't really compare the flu shot numbers with those of COVID shots.

 

Not sure why to take it with a grain of salt. Your explanation doesn’t seem to make sense. ER visits aren’t being made up that I’ve seen. If you can show some evidence that the numbers aren’t real than I will take them with a grain of salt. Otherwise I will go with them.

 

You can actually pretty easily do a lot better than just go with the numbers. On the VAERS website you can in fact check the details of every case. Not sure if it's working, but here's my search for ED visits after the COVID vaccine, for example:

https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D8;jsessionid=5F5881ECC26079A1D4FDA22AF78B

If that doesn't work, you can try going through this link:

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) Request

The experience at my hospital is that by far the most common has been vasovagal response. It's a new vaccine, people are nervous about it, and people pass out after receiving it. Just the first few days we had a couple folks pass out.

You have to also consider that for most people, 2020 wasn't the first year they got their flu shot. If they had a flu shot before and had an adverse reaction, then they're not likely to get the flu shot again. The only people who got the flu shot last year would've been ones who either never had a bad reaction before, or it's the first time they're getting it.

The fundamental issue is that without blinding, placebo, and randomization, it's very difficult to compare between two interventions. The best data that we have right now remains the RCTs run by each vaccine-maker, which are all double-blinded RCTs, and the data from that suggests no significant increase in serious adverse events.

 

So I assume since there’s no form studies on long Covid that we should take any stories of long Covid with a grain of salt? I mean long Covid could just by psychological for the vast majority of these people, right?

 

Yes, it absolutely could. There's a reason we're neither teaching long COVID nor warning our patients about it. It's the same for COVID myocarditis. Until some formal, well-designed study prove that they're real the medical community will treat it as just another hypothesis that remains to be proven.

 

When a freezer broke in a California hospital, officials jumped to action to administer more than 800 vaccines in just about 2 hours
When a freezer broke in a California hospital, officials jumped to action to administer more than 800 vaccines in just about 2 hours - CNN

 

My wife and I just received the first dose of the Pfizer covid vaccine. We went to TGMG Armenia (North Tampa). It was a very smooth process, very quick. So far after 2 hours, no major side effects. I was very impressed with the facility, the setup, and how they processed us. They are limiting vaccines to seniors over 65 who are patients of TGMG.
Tampa General has the cold storage to store the Pfizer vaccine as well as machines that can manufacture dry ice. They are very diligent in the way the vaccine was administered.

 

People drove from as far away from Tampa and Ft Lauderdale to get shots in the poor ag community of Immokalee. Doses Sent to low income area usurped by Naples residents and out of towners while others were working

Pop-up vaccine site meant for Immokalee residents gets flooded with outsiders - NBC2 News

 

South African Covid variant appears to ‘obviate’ antibody drugs, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says

 

The bigger implication here is that it may be at least partially resistant to the vaccines as well.

 

The question is, how many infected people from S.A can we manage to get over here quick before we shut down any travel?

 

The Johnson and Johnson vaccine candidate could win emergency approval from the UK within weeks.

The J&J vaccine is based on DNA and not mRNA, so it is not as fragile and does not need ultra cold storage. It is delivered to the cells by being placed inside a modified adenovirus. J&J used this same technology in July 2020 to receive approval for the first Ebola vaccine approved by any medical body for use in Africa.

I do not know anything, but would guess that if UK and J&J are this confident, then they are seeing similar efficacy data that Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have been reporting. You would think that anything less would kind of be a PR problem.

COVID-19 tracker: Moderna vaccine could protect for years, CEO says; Johnson & Johnson cruises toward U.K. shot nod