[News] Coronavirus

A place to discuss the now-global coronavirus outbreak.

I'm probably a very cynical person but I think the sudden abundance of caution wrt the AZ vaccine in Australia is to take the heat off the fact that the supply chain is pathetic and millions of doses behind.

By recommending it be avoided they crater the demand for the product they had no supply for which was making them look utterly inept. Now they look like they give a sh*t and kick the can down the road. I highly doubt my turn for a vaccine will arrive before this time in 2022 and it infuriates me.

The grift continues... I wonder if these two feel any shame or remorse....

Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has joined Big Ass Fans, lending his scientific credibility to a company division that says its ion-generating technology kills the coronavirus. The company charges $9,450 for a fan with technology that academic air quality experts question.

As strategic health and safety adviser, he follows Dr. Deborah Birx, former White House coronavirus response coordinator, into the booming air purifying industry. Last month, she signed on with ActivePure, a company that also makes a pitch about virus-destroying technology, but markets some devices that run afoul of California indoor air quality rules, according to a KHN investigation.

Bruce wrote:

I'm probably a very cynical person but I think the sudden abundance of caution wrt the AZ vaccine in Australia is to take the heat off the fact that the supply chain is pathetic and millions of doses behind.

By recommending it be avoided they crater the demand for the product they had no supply for which was making them look utterly inept. Now they look like they give a sh*t and kick the can down the road. I highly doubt my turn for a vaccine will arrive before this time in 2022 and it infuriates me.

That’s sort of the whole issue in a nutshell.

The majority of the AZ vaccine for the ‘rest of the world’ (I.e. not Europe or the US) was to be manufactured at the serum institute in India. The Indian government passed new legislation a few weeks back saying no vaccines manufactured in India can leave until they’re finished with them. Given India’s population, that’s going to take a while.

As I have said before AZ’s manufacturing issues aren’t exactly uncommon. I suspect whatever legal agreements that have been signed make that quite clear, it’s just the politicians signing them probably didn’t really understand what they were signing, and the legal people probably didn’t spell it out. This is very specialised stuff at the end of the day, and the pharmaceutical companies employ lots of their own lawyers to cover all this stuff.

That said the manufacturing issues are clearly a lot worse than AZ were expecting, and are taking a long time to resolve. None of it helps.

I also know that there are also significant disruptions in the global raw material supply chain as well, so even if they could manufacture without issues, they can’t get the raw ingredients to do so at the moment. The Moderna vaccine is having the same problem.

It’s all a bit of mess - pharmaceutical companies have said they’ll do their best to meet government (all the governments!) vaccine demands, and governments have promised their populations something that isn’t in their control to deliver. Now they are all scrambling to cover their own arses for their own shortcomings, and failure to deliver on promises that were never theirs to deliver in the first place.

Not saying their isn’t plenty of ‘blame’ to go round there - and, scientifically speaking the fact we have viable, effective vaccination candidates in the timescales they have been delivered is probably the greatest scientific achievement of the last 100 years - but the ‘safety’ of the AZ vaccine is being used as a bit of a political crutch at the moment. All medicines have potential safety issues - we have a word for that, they’re called side-effects - but I don’t feel that the AZ vaccine’s potential blood clot issue is one that’s any worse than half a dozen other popular medicines (or vaccines) available that nobody gets their knickers in a twist over.

As an aside, humanity has probably never needed to manufacture 6 billion of anything in such a short timeframe. Better management would probably have helped, but resources don't come from nowhere. I don't even know what the ingredients are in a vaccine, but paying to scale up those facilities is something that only governments would be likely to do, because we need six billion instantly, and then probably many fewer going forward. Any big capacity expansions are likely to be idled, meaning that the market won't want to invest there.

It's hard to tell at this remove, but it seems like hardly anyone in any government realized that ahead of time and did anything about it.

So, yeah, we're screwing this up pretty badly, but it's a thing humans have never needed or tried to do before. Hopefully, with some clever governance, we can make sure the next global vaccine rollout goes a lot better. Scientists buried away in obscure departments have probably thought about this problem, and getting their studies up to the highest level would be a truly excellent idea.

And fie, fie to vaccine nationalists. Including Biden. He may be bound by agreements that Trump signed, but fie to him anyway for not leaning on those companies to negate the unconscionable 'no sharing' clauses.

FDA wants to pause J&J while they investigate blood clots

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it was acting "out of an abundance of caution".

It said six cases of severe blood clotting had been detected in more than 6.8 million doses of the vaccine.

The recommendation follows similar rare cases in the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has prompted some curbs in its use.

My first Moderna shot is scheduled for this Saturday. Yay.

Stele wrote:

FDA wants to praise J&J while they investigate blood clots

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it was acting "out of an abundance of caution".

It said six cases of severe blood clotting had been detected in more than 6.8 million doses of the vaccine.

The recommendation follows similar rare cases in the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has prompted some curbs in its use.

Not a doctor. But as someone who works with risk management for a living, WTAF?

Sounds like Johnson x2 just announced that they are halting deliverance of vaccines to Europe. Presumably due to FDAs decision.
This is turning into a mess.

As for the side effects, afaik the issue is not the probability, as it is clearly extremely low. It is the severity of the condition.
Also that it might primarily hit younger people, and since it is especially older people who are vaccinated so far, the actual risk might be higher. Although likely still very low.

One number I would like to see is, what is the % of these severe blood clot cases among people who get for example a normal flu vaccine.

Well I can tell you the risk of blood clot for women taking birth control is around 1000 per million, and that's not pulled off the market.

And covid causes blood clots too in tens of thousands of cases per million, plus other stuff just as bad or worse.

The people they scare off from taking vaccine because of this pause and spread from that will kill a lot more than 6 people.

Stele wrote:

Well I can tell you the risk of blood clot for women taking birth control is around 1000 per million, and that's not pulled off the market.

And covid causes blood clots too in tens of thousands of cases per million, plus other stuff just as bad or worse.

The people they scare off from taking vaccine because of this pause and spread from that will kill a lot more than 6 people.

It's gotta be lawsuit protection. They could keep the vaccine flowing while continuing to work on contraindications and related guidance. However, if they don't pause while developing that guidance they could be liable for any deaths that would have been avoided.

(Edit: And yes... probably way more deaths due to the pause. But they're not liable for pausing product delivery out of a ridiculous overabundance of caution. *eyeroll*)

I don't believe that birth control tends to cause brain blood clots specifically, which the vaccines appears to be doing. I think the pause is more about PR, but it's PR to ease folks concerns over the vaccines, which is warranted. It may slow things down for a day, but in the end if it causes more folks to get the vaccine than those who are scared by the clots then that's fine.

It's still a bit of fluff, really. Like all the articles about folks getting Covid after having been vaccinated. Yes, unfortunately, nothing is perfect, but so far these vaccines are quite safe.

The Ars article says that the pause is to make sure that the medical community knows about the symptoms and how to treat them, at which point they'll resume vaccinations.

The immune system attacks the platelets, causing both clotting and a major loss of platelets, which is not normally seen in combination. Treating that combo like regular blood clots can be deadly, and they want to be sure that as many people know about the symptoms as possible.

The chance is tiny, though. Really tiny. Six cases in 6.8 million people is multiple orders of magnitude less risky than COVID.

Again, sounds like PR. I'm not being overly cynical here, we already knew all of this well over a month ago, including specifically how to treat it. They're making extra sure everyone knows, which is basically a PR move, which is fine, we need to combat the anti-vaxxer propoganda, ya know?

Stele wrote:

Well I can tell you the risk of blood clot for women taking birth control is around 1000 per million, and that's not pulled off the market.

The question is not the amount of blood clots, but this particular kind of blood clots which is supposedly extremely rare to see.

There is also a significant difference between medicine that has been tested and used over years, and medicine which had (no matter how impressive it is) been rushed through in record time.

So many independent health agencies in different countries seems to have reached the same conclusion now. Not that the vaccines should not be used, but that there is something which need to be investigated, and determined a response to, such as how to treat the blood clots.
Maybe there is more to it than countries trying to save face over a lack of vaccines. At least that explanation doesn’t seem likely for US, who got lots of vaccines.

As for scaring people so they don’t want a vaccine, hard to say how it ends up overall, but I definitely also seeing the opposite response, that people are comforted by health agencies not trying to push vaccines through regardless of any concerns, making them more willing to get vaccinated (albeit likely with another vaccine than the ones being investigated).

These “our health agencies are being nefarious” feels too much like what conspiracy theorists comes up with. If you can’t trust them when they express concerns why are you trusting them when they say something you agree with?

Many oral contraceptives do increase risk of ischemic stroke (brain blood clots that cause damage). If that number turns out to be fairly accurate (6 cases in 6.8 million doses of vaccine) then some of these contraceptives are at least 10 times more likely to cause strokes, and they're still prescribed. Granted, they may turn up more strokes after the vaccine once they start looking.

Also, the contraceptives are causing strokes even in a population that is relatively low risk for them (younger women) compared to the vaccine which is being given to older people who are at higher risk for strokes already, and still the numbers seem lower so far.

gewy wrote:

Plus, the contraceptives are causing strokes in a population that is relatively low risk for them (younger women) compared to the vaccine which is being given to older people who are at higher risk for strokes already, and still the numbers seem lower.

That seems to be the case here too. The blood clots seems to be overrepresented among young women. As mentioned earlier, since the vaccines have primarily been given to older people so far, that could obfuscate the risk for younger women somewhat.
IF it turns out the concern is justified, a simple solution is just, as some countries have already done, to use J&J and AZ for the older population/men and not for younger women for example.
Imagine the outcry if it turned out that the vaccines had real problems for young women, and it was ignored? Then we would all be here complained that old men once again didn’t give a sh*t about others.

Hopefully the outcome is that everyone decides to use these vaccines again in a few days. Until then, I’ll believe that the same experts who were trying to do their best a week ago are also trying to do their best today.

Ah, didn't notice the detail that all of the reported strokes after the vaccine were in young women. That definitely changes things and implies the risk could be higher than contraceptives.

Wouldn't surprise me though if this ultimately turns out to be a potential risk with all of the vaccines.

garion333 wrote:

Again, sounds like PR. I'm not being overly cynical here, we already knew all of this well over a month ago, including specifically how to treat it. They're making extra sure everyone knows, which is basically a PR move, which is fine, we need to combat the anti-vaxxer propoganda, ya know?

I have precisely zero faith that the media will understand and accurately communicate what's happening and I have even less faith that the average American will be able to process this information beyond "the J&J vaccine might kill you," which, in combination with its much lower reported efficacy rate (even though it was tested against the more aggressive variants, unlike Pfizer and Moderna), will result in most people coming to the conclusion that they should stay away from it altogether (and maybe even the other vaccines, just to be safe).

In that respect it's a massive PR problem for J&J.

Bruce wrote:

I'm probably a very cynical person but I think the sudden abundance of caution wrt the AZ vaccine in Australia is to take the heat off the fact that the supply chain is pathetic and millions of doses behind.

By recommending it be avoided they crater the demand for the product they had no supply for which was making them look utterly inept. Now they look like they give a sh*t and kick the can down the road. I highly doubt my turn for a vaccine will arrive before this time in 2022 and it infuriates me.

No Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for Australia as sector calls for compensation scheme

Sydney Morning Herald wrote:

Australia will not buy the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to boost the nation’s immunisation arsenal because it is too similar to the AstraZeneca drug, but Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he hopes the majority of the population will be immunised by the end of the year.

Health Minister Greg Hunt’s office confirmed on Monday the federal government would not purchase the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine to boost supplies as it is the same type of vaccine as the AstraZeneca drug, which is being manufactured locally.

Johnson & Johnson also confirmed it required a no-fault compensation scheme before it would sell vaccines to Australia, which the government has not committed to introducing.

Last week the government said it was still in talks with Johnson & Johnson to buy the Janssen vaccine, but on Monday a spokesperson for Mr Hunt said there was no plan at this stage.

“The Janssen vaccine is an adenovirus vaccine, the same type of vaccine as the AstraZeneca vaccine. The government does not intend to purchase any further adenovirus vaccines at this time,” the spokesperson said.

Oh no. That's bad bad news for Australia. And for the world if it ever spreads in Australia.

gewy wrote:

Ah, didn't notice the detail that all of the reported strokes after the vaccine were in young women. That definitely changes things and implies the risk could be higher than contraceptives.

My wife's clinic sent an explainer saying that all 6 cases were in women aged 18-48.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/bUJ7Qft.jpg)

farley3k wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/bUJ7Qft.jpg)

Half of Americans play the lottery every year. We collectively bought $82 billion worth of lottery tickets in 2019. We aren't good judges of probabilities and risks.

OG_slinger wrote:

We aren't good judges of probabilities and risks.

Nobody is much good at it to be honest. If we were, nobody would drive a car though!

Moderna noon Thursday.

LouZiffer wrote:

It's gotta be lawsuit protection. They could keep the vaccine flowing while continuing to work on contraindications and related guidance. However, if they don't pause while developing that guidance they could be liable for any deaths that would have been avoided.

Not sure this is true (maybe it is for J&J) at least in the US. Wasn't there a law or something that passed last year that had a clause that the COVID vaccine manufactures could not be sued for any issues the vaccine caused? It is one of the reasons they were able to push it through so quickly, knowing that if something comes up down the road they wouldn't be liable. It is also one of the reasons people are hesitant.

I don't know what compelled me to click on this thread when I have barely looked in here this whole time... and then I see the Bart Scott video, and now I know what called out to me.

Anyway, got my first Pfizer shot this past weekend. Counting the days to #2.

kazar wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

It's gotta be lawsuit protection. They could keep the vaccine flowing while continuing to work on contraindications and related guidance. However, if they don't pause while developing that guidance they could be liable for any deaths that would have been avoided.

Not sure this is true (maybe it is for J&J) at least in the US. Wasn't there a law or something that passed last year that had a clause that the COVID vaccine manufactures could not be sued for any issues the vaccine caused? It is one of the reasons they were able to push it through so quickly, knowing that if something comes up down the road they wouldn't be liable. It is also one of the reasons people are hesitant.

It only indemnifies Pfizer and Moderna, and does not protect them from being sued over willful misconduct - such as not providing adequate procedures or warnings to cover known issues.

Yep...not surprised. I’m glad my grandparents and parents will be able to get vaccinated, but it will be at least this time next year for me and everyone else in the last group, I reckon.

If all y'all don't want a Johnson & Johnson shot, I'll take a couple off your hands.