Northern Europe during Pandemic -- Summers 2020 & 2021 & onwards

[Montanan]

Originally Posted by Exile

We've known about these mutations/variants for quite awhile now. Expert opinion seems to vary thus far re: the efficacy of the vaccines that are currently being administered, but the consensus seems to be not to let potential reduced efficacy deter one from taking the vaccine. Is there a different conclusion we're supposed to take away from this particular study that I missed?

An interesting and contentious exchange between Senator Ron Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci occurred today.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/comp...?ocid=msedgntp


White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci pushed back on Thursday against Republican Sen. Rand Paul's claim that people are not at risk of Covid after they have recovered or have been vaccinated. New variants, particularly the B.1.351 strain first identified in South Africa, have been shown to evade the protection of vaccines.

"In the South African study conducted by [Johnson & Johnson], they found that people who were infected with wild type and were exposed to the variant in South Africa, the 351, it was as if they had never been infected before, they had no protection," Fauci agreed it was unlikely someone would get infected with the original strain for at least six months, "But we in our country now have variants."

The exchange came a little over a week after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance that said people who are fully immunized can safely visit other vaccinated people indoors without wearing a mask or social distancing. But the CDC also recommended that vaccinated people should still wear masks in public settings, gatherings with unvaccinated people from more than one other household and with people who are at increased risk for severe illness. While a growing body of evidence suggests that people who are inoculated against Covid are less likely to transmit the disease to others, it's still not known how long someone's protection might last or the effectiveness of the shots against emerging variants.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by Montanan

The safety review suspension of the use of the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine has and will slow the vaccination roll out in many countries. Fifteen countries across Europe have suspended the rollout of the Astrazeneca vaccine while the EU medicines regulators investigates reports of blood clots among patients.

A few hours ago the European Medicines Agency announced its findings:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...blood-clotting

The report is complex so have a read of the article for full details. The vaccine has not been sweepingly labelled as “safe”, but essentially “safe enough”.

As a result several EU countries that recently paused the use of AstraZeneca have responded swiftly:
“Italy’s prime minister, Mario Draghi, said AstraZeneca vaccinations would resume on Friday, and Spain is set to make a similar announcement later on Thursday.”


From other news reports:
“Latvia and Lithuania are to restart administering vaccinations using AstraZeneca shots tomorrow, both countries’ health ministers said, after the EU’s drug watchdog said it remained convinced the benefits of the jab outweigh the risks.”

“Cyprus is to also resume vaccinations with the AstraZeneca vaccine from tomorrow.”

“Ireland expects to announce tomorrow its decision on whether to resume the roll-out of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, deputy chief medical officer Ronan Glynn said.”

Sweden is more hesitant:
“Sweden needs “a few days” to decide whether to restart paused vaccinations with AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine. “The public health agency needs a few days to analyse the situation and how the AstraZeneca vaccine can be used in Sweden,” director general of the agency Johan Carlson said. “Next week we will say the position we are taking on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.” ”

[Montanan]

Well that is welcome news especially since the EU has ordered 300 million doses of that vaccine so it is important as to the supply side. Hopefully, there is not additional hesitancy to being vaccinated resulting from the safety review. In many EU countries it seems that there are AZ vaccines in supply but lacking demand to be jabbed, low percentage of uptake, due to a perceived comparative lesser effectiveness and now perhaps lingering concerns of relative safety.

The USA has tens of millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine already stored in cold storage awaiting completion and analysis of AstraZeneca's 30,000 person Phase III clinical trial in the USA and then FDA review and approval process. The USA has nearly three times as many doses of all types of vaccines on order as there will be a population available for vaccination. The Biden administration has indicated that the USA will release the massive extra vaccine supply once Americans that desire to be vaccinated have been administered. I suspect a lot will go to third world distribution.

All the best.

[Montanan]

Interesting read:

The US hasn't authorized AstraZeneca's vaccine for 2 main reasons. That could change in April.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/med...?ocid=msedgntp

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by Montanan

Interesting read:

The US hasn't authorized AstraZeneca's vaccine for 2 main reasons. That could change in April.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/med...?ocid=msedgntp

Interesting - in Oz, the TGA (our approving body) has FULLY approved AZ i.e. not just approved it for "emergency use". At the time, they were criticised for taking too long and that they should have 'rushed though an emergency use approval'.

[CatNewBee]

Originally Posted by Montanan

I hope this information will subdue any fears, or misperceptions that the AstraZeneca vaccine's virus being contagious.

The AZD1222 vaccine is a replication-deficient simian adenovirus vector, [a common chimpanzee cold virus] containing the full‐length codon‐optimised coding sequence of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein along with a tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) leader sequence.

The benign adenovirus is called replication-deficient because some of its essential genes were deleted, so as to make it inactivated so it can not replicate itself, and replaced by a gene coding for the spike of SARS-CoV-2. Following vaccination, the adenovirus vector enters the cells, releases its genes, those are transported to the cell nucleus, thereafter the cell's machinery does the transcription in mRNA and the translation in proteins.

The AstraZeneca vaccine's modified virus can not replicate, therefore one can not accidentally be infected by talking to someone who has been vaccinated. The person that received the vaccine is not infected with the simian adenovirus, that virus is simply the vector.

And this is a lie. Because the virus is grown and multiplied in human embriotic kidney cells. It is not built / construct technically every one of them, they multiply in human cells and therefore are infectious.

Also the other part of the vaccine is the tPA vector, that weakens and tricks the human cell to let the virus in and produce it's proteines to provoke an immune reaction - basically infect the cell. This vector could also let in Corona and other viruses as a back door.

In some healthy people this immune response leads to hard symptoms, blood clogging venes, headache and in some cases death. But hey, they die for the good of the masses, right? This death are acceptable in contrast to Corina.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by Wotname

Interesting - in Oz, the TGA (our approving body) has FULLY approved AZ i.e. not just approved it for "emergency use". At the time, they were criticised for taking too long and that they should have 'rushed though an emergency use approval'.

Hi Wottie
Let me guess: Did you hear this from Scottie?

The TGA never fully approved the AZ vaccine. It was approved provisionally:
https://www.health.gov.au/news/tga-p...e-in-australia

Aussies were told that the AZ vaccine was not approved until mid February because “unlike other countries who had rushed emergency approval through”, the FDA had taken the time to examine the data very thoroughly before deciding the vaccine was perfectly safe for Australians.

So Scottie is either deliberately playing word games to deceive Aussies or is ignorant of the facts.
Any trust I had in our politicians went out of the window hearing this .

SWL

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

. . .Any trust I had in our politicians went out of the window hearing this .SWL

Believe me, they are not any worse than anyone else's politicians.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

Hi Wottie
Let me guess: Did you hear this from Scottie?

The TGA never fully approved the AZ vaccine. It was approved provisionally:
https://www.health.gov.au/news/tga-p...e-in-australia

Aussies were told that the AZ vaccine was not approved until mid February because “unlike other countries who had rushed emergency approval through”, and the FDA had taken the time to examine the data very thoroughly before deciding the vaccine was perfectly safe for Australians.

So Scottie is either deliberately playing word games to deceive Aussies or is ignorant of the facts.
Any trust I had in our politicians went out of the window hearing this .

SWL

Thanks for the link and apologies to all for not getting my facts right before posting - I do try to avoid posting misleading information.

Lassie, you guess is almost correct. I think I heard it from the lips of Greg Hunt (Health Minster) but he never speaks without approval from the PM - (just like the rest of the minsters). Although I should have realised it was a lie as soon as I saw the lips moving - my bad!

I'll stop now while I still can.......

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Believe me, they are not any worse than anyone else's politicians.

There was a time (way back) when we thought they were better than most - ahh, those innocent childhood memories dashed forever.


Somewhat appropriate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r44Ach4mXE4

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Wotname

Interesting - in Oz, the TGA (our approving body) has FULLY approved AZ i.e. not just approved it for "emergency use". At the time, they were criticised for taking too long and that they should have 'rushed though an emergency use approval'.

Aren't word games fun.... so we have emergency and we have provisional and we have full........
I think provisional is closer to full than it is to emergency....

Oh well... Hunt does look rather stressed of late.....

Meanwhile a question someone may have the answer for...
What percentage of vaccines administered in the UK have been AZ and what problems have they had with it?

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Aren't word games fun.... so we have emergency and we have provisional and we have full........
I think provisional is closer to full than it is to emergency....

Oh well... Hunt does look rather stressed of late.....

Meanwhile a question someone may have the answer for...
What percentage of vaccines administered in the UK have been AZ and what problems have they had with it?

I believe it's over 11 million and no abnormal side effects have been noted to date, certainly no clotting reported.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Aren't word games fun.... so we have emergency and we have provisional and we have full........
I think provisional is closer to full than it is to emergency....

You forgot to include “conditional marketing authorisation”. This has been granted by the EMA in the EU:

https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/em...thorisation-eu

I wonder where “conditional” fits on the approval scale.
Since AZ was approved in the EU midway between UK’s emergency approval and Australia’s provisional one, shall we designate it a bit between the two?

[Montanan]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

This stuff is experimental, and using live viruses as vaccine means, even not taken it, you may get infected by the AstraZeneca virus accidently by talking to vaccinated people.

Replication-incompetent vector vaccines use a vector virus that has been engineered to not replicate in vivo.

Whereas, replication-competent vectors are derived from attenuated or vaccine strains of viruses. Using replication-competent vectors often results in a more robust immune response than with replication-incompetent vectors, since they replicate within the vaccinated individual and trigger an innate immune response.

Jansen and AstraZeneca vaccines both utilize replication-incompetent vector viruses that are adenoviruses which have been engineered with a targeted spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Specifically benign Chimpanzee cold viruses. Neither the Jansen, nor the AstraZeneca vaccines use replication-competent viruses.

The replication-incompetent vector viruses infect the vaccinated persons cells only near the site of the injection and therein stimulate the immune response of the person against the targeted spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The site which is a bit sore after an inoculation is the limited zone where the replication-incompetent vector virus has traveled. The replication-incompetent viruses can not replicate; They will not even replicate within the one cell they have infected at the injection site and will not spread to adjacent cells of the one cell the virus has infected; they will not spread far from the immediate injection site. They are not contagious viruses, they are merely vectors. One can not be accidentally infected with replication-incompetent vector viruses by talking to vaccinated persons.

But one certainly could get infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus if the vaccinated person is infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Continue to wear masks and practice social distancing when around vaccinated persons, just as the vaccinated person should continue to wear masks and practice social distancing from person who are not co-habitants. Albeit, there being much lesser risk of cross infection between persons that are both fully vaccinated.

The Moderna and the Pfizer Biotech vaccines are mRNA vaccines; they do not use vector viruses in their vaccines. Those vaccines also have nothing that will be contagious.

Stay safe, stay healthy.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by boatman61

I believe it's over 11 million and no abnormal side effects have been noted to date, certainly no clotting reported.

It would be nice, but this is not the case. Blood clots have certainly been reported. The general incidence of blood clots has been found to be no higher following vaccination (in total it may actually be less), but specifically rarer types of clotting with low platelet count have also been reported in the UK, as they have in Europe, and it is these that are of concern:

“The UK has received five reports of a specific brain blood clot in people who have received the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, though no causal link has been made with the jab.

The five people were men aged 19 to 59 who experienced a clot together with low blood platelet count. One of the five has since died.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said that use of the vaccine should continue while the five reports were investigated.

“The available evidence does not suggest that blood clots in veins (venous thromboembolism) are caused by Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca,” the agency said.

“A further, detailed review into five UK reports of a very rare and specific type of blood clot in the cerebral veins (sinus vein thrombosis) occurring together with lowered platelets (thrombocytopenia) is ongoing.”
The MHRA stressed the events were “extremely rare” and there was a possibility they could have been caused by Covid-19 itself.

It said the cases represented a less than one in a million chance of suffering this type of clot, while the risk of dying from Covid-19 aged 40 to 49 was one in 1,000.”

https://www.breakingnews.ie/covid-va...b-1098315.html

It is thought the lower incidence in the UK may be due to a lesser proportion of the vaccines being administered to younger people compared to the EU.

The last sentence in the above quote is critical. As with all vaccines, risk vs benefit needs to be weighed carefully.