Covid-19 Vaccine - Where, How & Costs

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The EMA is looking into a potential explanation for the blood clot cases.

There’s a suspicion that those cases may stem from incorrect injection techniques.

Interesting - you'd expect that to have happened with BioNTech/Pfizer too though, especially in the EU where it has been administered more than twice as frequently as Astra-Zeneca. Of course, there might be something peculiar to the mRNA principle that makes such vaccines inherently less prone to triggering these clots even when given incorrectly. The good news in this would be that the already tiny risk with AZ's jab could be all but eliminated by the very simple expedient of urging nurses to be really diligent about the injection! As mentioned earlier, German researchers claim to have identified the process by which the thromboses are caused and have devised an effective treatment for *once they've formed*, but preventing this from happening in the first place would obviously be better still.

I thought I had seen some blood clot reports with the BioNTech/Pfizer jab though not as many as the Oxford/AZ, but for some reason they have had nothing like the publicity.
 
Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville:

“We’ve seen what a pandemic can do to us [...]. So we should not assume that those who wish us harm would not be willing to use those things” in war.​


Also
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy warned that the Chinese “have convinced themselves that we are a nation in decline” and to “avoid miscalculation” on their part, the U.S. needs to demonstrate a robust investment in defense, particularly in connectivity, and its commitment to its allies.

“We need to show them that we’re recovering from COVID, that we’re back on our feet, addressing key domestic challenges,” she said.

With so much verbose voicing opposing EU defense policy to NATO's objectives, this is probably what the EU should be reknown to have said today.

Wouldn't it then be more appropriate to have NATO takeover the Vaccination campaign?

 
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Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville:

“We’ve seen what a pandemic can do to us [...]. So we should not assume that those who wish us harm would not be willing to use those things” in war.​


Also
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy warned that the Chinese “have convinced themselves that we are a nation in decline” and to “avoid miscalculation” on their part, the U.S. needs to demonstrate a robust investment in defense, particularly in connectivity, and its commitment to its allies.

“We need to show them that we’re recovering from COVID, that we’re back on our feet, addressing key domestic challenges,” she said.

With so much verbose voicing opposing EU defense policy to NATO's objectives, this is probably what the EU should be reknown to have said today.

Wouldn't it then be more appropriate to have NATO takeover the Vaccination campaign?

I am guessing at the top he’s talking about biological WMDs.
 
I thought I had seen some blood clot reports with the BioNTech/Pfizer jab though not as many as the Oxford/AZ, but for some reason they have had nothing like the publicity.

Yes, reported by Flyaway in this thread too:


As I mentioned in the response though, those data were apparently for the sum total of any and all kinds of clot. For both vaccines, this statistic is unremarkable, the concern here is about one specific type of particularly dangerous thrombosis which is normally exceedingly rare. This explains two seemingly contradictory aspects of the story: it doesn't take a load of cases to get a sharp increase in risk compared to the expectation in unvaccinated people, so the danger is very much real, even if the numbers are tiny. On the other hand, it means EMA is probably correct in saying the benefit of the AZ vaccine continues to outweigh the risks (because obviously you have to consider the probability of developing such a clot against the consequences of a potential Covid-19 infection).

Would I still take the AZ vaccine, personally? On balance, I think yes I would - just being male drastically cuts an already small risk further (31 cases known in total, only 2 of which were male). If I was female (and the same age), perhaps not. Germany has just decided to recommend the vaccine for people over 60 only (as in the case of France, given the state of the vaccination campaign this should have relatively little impact for now).
 
Serbia, vaccination campaign:
Serbia has one of the highest inoculation rates in Europe, mainly thanks to the government's large purchases of the Sinopharm vaccine from China and the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. The country also is using the vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca.

Although over 2 million people in the country of 7 million have so far received at least one shot, Serbia has seen a notable decline in number of residents signing up. Officials and doctors link the drop-off in interest to an increasingly vocal anti-vaccine movement.
CNN put that at 50% today plus 30000 foreigneirs.
 
The virus is showing a strong example of convergent evolution but is this because it only has a limited set of cards to play, we just don’t know yet.



Yet this group of experts are somewhat contradicting this.


TBH I wonder if that first article is a strictly accurate report of what was said. The reason is P1 carries a mutation we don’t see in other variants I believe. Which I find hard to believe such a group wouldn’t comment on.
 


What a stretch!! From the unproven blood clot's concerns with AZ to ordering Vaccine from Russia, one of the vaccines with the lowest international scrutiny and proven lower performances while being produced by a nation that invaded militarly a part of Europe!
 


What a stretch!! From the unproven blood clot's concerns with AZ to ordering Vaccine from Russia, one of the vaccines with the lowest international scrutiny and proven lower performances while being produced by a nation that invaded militarly a part of Europe!
Sputnik V has 92% effectiveness.
 
My bad. I had outdated numbers in mind (the vaccine was enhanced under the same name).
 
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Sputnik V looks legitimately promising - as Flyaway has pointed out, its efficacy has since been accepted to almost match the mRNA vaccines in non-Russian peer-reviews of study results. And although it hasn't been administered at the same scale as the leading Western alternatives, it has been in widespread use for several months in various countries other than Russia now.

There are two problems with pinning hopes on it as an alternative to AZ though:

1) Russia is having its own supply bottleneck, there isn't really enough to go round for its own populace, let alone the EU. Standing up production at EU sites would therefore be mandatory, so it does not offer a quick way out of the shortage.

2) From the safety perspective, there are enough parallels to AZ that the risk of similar complications should be investigated closely as part of the approval process. If it turns out to have the same problem then it would be unable to cover for AZ in younger people, rendering it redundant.

As for the political angle, that is an unfortunate situation, but I don't think it can be ruled out on that basis. You can't very well trounce Putin for his refusal to accept British and Norwegian help in attempting to rescue the survivors of the Kursk explosion in 2000 and then not seriously consider Sputnik V today. We are potentially talking about a lot more lives to be saved! Also, given the production issues mentioned above, there is an opportunity to limit the PR benefit for Putin and turn export of EU-made Sputnik V doses back to Russia into a foreign policy win-win, if this is played skillfully.

Long story short: Sputnik V thoroughly deserves due consideration, but it is not the quick fix some are hoping for.
 
I don’t think viral vector vaccines like AZ & Sputnik V are going to cut it longer term. Apparently the body can get over familiar with the altered virus they use which reduces their effectiveness. Also I have doubts if they will be as effective against variants. If COVID-19 does prove to be a virus with a large number of alternations it can make, which we don’t know yet.
 
This is scary on so many levels. How some of the people were allowed to be involved in the WHO report when they should have not been due to conflict on interests. To the proliferation of bio labs in the Wuhan area to the potential for far worse viruses that maybe targets for research.

 
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And so it begins...

Stuff like this though understandable still seems premature to me. It’s not like we have all the tools yet to keep it strongly under control or know enough about it to decide how much it may mutate further.
 
What a surprise company that has lobbied big for federal contracts then manages to ruin 15 million doses of J&J’s vaccine through manufacturing errors. The errors went undetected for days until J&J QC spotted them and the batches were quarantined. J&J have now put more of their own staff into the plant.


 
How should this unexpected mix be called? Johnson-Zeneca or Astra-Johnson?
Anyhow, what a world when even vaccines are now under confinement!
 
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