Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

[SocketRocket]

An interesting read

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...uld-reason-britain-faring-better-europe-says/

Looks like the UK has seen a constant high with infections. Some of the countries showing a recent increase are those with smaller populations where smaller increases will show higher as a percentage.

 

[Ethan]

An interesting read

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...uld-reason-britain-faring-better-europe-says/

A load of rubbish. He is essentially arguing that although AZ has demonstrably lower primary efficacy and antibody response, it has a superior T-cell response. This makes no sense and must be due to the large amount of wishful thinking added to the vaccine mixture. Both AZ and the mRNA vaccines interact with the immune system in the same way (not all the others do, Novavax for example), but the effects on antibodies and T-cells appear to be proportional. Measuring antibodies is easy, measuring T-cell activity is somewhat harder, but measuring clinical effects overrides both, and mRNAs are clearly more effective. AZ is a good vaccine, though, and has a place. It is worth also noting that the JCVI chose not to offer it as a booster, a decision they would not have taken had there been any evidence that it offered at least a similar additional effect as the mRNAs.

The reason the rest of Europe is now doing badly where the UK is doing better is that last winter the UK had a large cull of the most vulnerable and they can't die again this winter, and the UK also brought some of its winter pressure forward into the summer. Overall vaccination rates are now similar to the UK in a number of European countries. Arguably, given that they have lower (or no) use of AZ means the effective population immunity is better in a number. Eastern European and Balkan countries lag behind most badly.

 

[PNWokingham]

A load of rubbish. He is essentially arguing that although AZ has demonstrably lower primary efficacy and antibody response, it has a superior T-cell response. This makes no sense and must be due to the large amount of wishful thinking added to the vaccine mixture. Both AZ and the mRNA vaccines interact with the immune system in the same way (not all the others do, Novavax for example), but the effects on antibodies and T-cells appear to be proportional. Measuring antibodies is easy, measuring T-cell activity is somewhat harder, but measuring clinical effects overrides both, and mRNAs are clearly more effective. AZ is a good vaccine, though, and has a place. It is worth also noting that the JCVI chose not to offer it as a booster, a decision they would not have taken had there been any evidence that it offered at least a similar additional effect as the mRNAs.

The reason the rest of Europe is now doing badly where the UK is doing better is that last winter the UK had a large cull of the most vulnerable and they can't die again this winter, and the UK also brought some of its winter pressure forward into the summer. Overall vaccination rates are now similar to the UK in a number of European countries. Arguably, given that they have lower (or no) use of AZ means the effective population immunity is better in a number. Eastern European and Balkan countries lag behind most badly.

thank god for that. For a minute i thought maybe the UK had done something well!!

 

[davidy233]

My lad did three events in a Scotland about three weeks ago…there was over 200 at each. As it happens he mentioned that the vaccine passports side of things worked well with no hassle or delays for folk going in. That said there was no vaccine passport checking done at the turnstile when I was going into Hampden last Monday - or any of the turnstiles of the section of the ground. Mind you there were still thousands queuing to get in at kickoff so maybe they stopped bothering.

Certainly stopped bothering at a football ground in Edinburgh I was at a month or so ago with 17,000 is fans - stewards stopped after a big queue built up in a short space of time

 

[Ethan]

thank god for that. For a minute i thought maybe the UK had done something well!!

The UK did do something well. The doctors, nurses, reception staff, etc etc did a stellar job organising and administering the vaccine.

But your reply hints at the problem.

The vaccination strategy isn't a football match. It isn't a competition between AZ and Pfizer for the Vaccine World Cup. Nor is a matter for thinly disguised glee when there is an outbreak in Germany or France. If AZ is less efficacious than Pfizer, that isn't a problem so long as it is dealt with rationally, it is still a good vaccine, but the implications are that strategy for boosters and other precautions predicated on the immune profile of the population need to be considered carefully, not by defending the team. The JCVI made the right decision not to include AZ in the booster strategy.

Soriot was brought into AZ to sell the company, ironically to Pfizer. But he overplayed his hand and they walked away. He is known to be a bit of a .... what's that word ... and has over promised quite a few things with this vax. On Radio 4 this morning, he said "There's no proof of anything, we don't know, but we need more data to analyse this and get the answer." Let me translate that for you - "we are just making this stuff up" but it has achieved its intention of making headlines on BBC and Sky News. It may or may not be a coincidence that he was talking on the same day that Kate Bingham trailed a speech at which she robustly defends the UK procurement strategy, which of course majored on AZ.

 

[chellie]

HID had his booster today. After having had two AZ's he was given the Moderna today as "that's what they had had delivered" So far he has no issues.

 

[yandabrown]

Had my Pfizer booster today, chap in the waiting lounge was telling us how all these injection had cured his needle phobia, at this point another fellow told us of his first injection at school, they told them the week before that they would have one and he asked his mum what an injection was. She told him that they put some special liquid on a needle and stuck it into you arm to stop you getting ill. Trouble was he had only ever seen knitting needles and was scared blankless! Come the day he saw all the kids in front of him in the queue come out crying which made him feel no better. Once he was inside and saw the tiny needle he laughed in relief and has never been scared of needles since.

 

[Ethan]

Had my Pfizer booster today, chap in the waiting lounge was telling us how all these injection had cured his needle phobia, at this point another fellow told us of his first injection at school, they told them the week before that they would have one and he asked his mum what an injection was. She told him that they put some special liquid on a needle and stuck it into you arm to stop you getting ill. Trouble was he had only ever seen knitting needles and was scared blankless! Come the day he saw all the kids in front of him in the queue come out crying which made him feel no better. Once he was inside and saw the tiny needle he laughed in relief and has never been scared of needles since.

The IM injection sounds unpleasant, but the needle is such a fine gauge that it really isn't. Muscle is not very sensitive, so once it gets through the skin and subcutaneous tissue, should be fine. The needle used for blood taking is a thicker one and you feel it more, in my opinion.

 

[bobmac]

The needle used for blood taking is a thicker one and you feel it more, in my opinion.

That's true, in my experience

 

[AliMc]

I hope you don't get the Moderna.
I did and although it wasn't bad, it was definitely worse than the Az

I had the Moderna booster last week along with the flu jab, one in each arm, had no issues whatsoever

 

[Ethan]

That's true, in my experience

Needles have a coloured plastic piece where they connect to the syringe. This denotes the width of the channel in the needle. This is important because some medicines that are injected are thick, and sometimes blood drawn can be damaged if the needle is too thin.

The normal blood sample needle is a green needle, which has a 21G thickness. There is another commonly used thinner needle, a blue needle, with a 23G thickness. This is sometimes used for blood sample in kids or in tricky veins. IM injection usually uses the blue needle, or even one size thinner. All of the needles are very sharp, which helps. The main unpleasantness is trying to push it through the skin. If it slips in like a hot knife through butter, much less pain. A good injector should usually be able to inject basically without any pain. A good decisive action is best, hesitation or fumbling is not good.

If you are unfortunate enough to be in an accident or other situation where you need fluid resuscitation with large volumes of (often rather gloopy) fluid administered fast, then a needle or cannula that looks more like a knitting needle will be used. Flow rates are related to the 4th power of the radius of a pipe or tube, so getting in a larger needle/cannula increases flow rate a huge amount especially something gloppy like blood or colloid.

 

[drdel]

A load of rubbish. He is essentially arguing that although AZ has demonstrably lower primary efficacy and antibody response, it has a superior T-cell response. This makes no sense and must be due to the large amount of wishful thinking added to the vaccine mixture. Both AZ and the mRNA vaccines interact with the immune system in the same way (not all the others do, Novavax for example), but the effects on antibodies and T-cells appear to be proportional. Measuring antibodies is easy, measuring T-cell activity is somewhat harder, but measuring clinical effects overrides both, and mRNAs are clearly more effective. AZ is a good vaccine, though, and has a place. It is worth also noting that the JCVI chose not to offer it as a booster, a decision they would not have taken had there been any evidence that it offered at least a similar additional effect as the mRNAs.

The reason the rest of Europe is now doing badly where the UK is doing better is that last winter the UK had a large cull of the most vulnerable and they can't die again this winter, and the UK also brought some of its winter pressure forward into the summer. Overall vaccination rates are now similar to the UK in a number of European countries. Arguably, given that they have lower (or no) use of AZ means the effective population immunity is better in a number. Eastern European and Balkan countries lag behind most badly.

Your second paragraph ìs supposition since the various nations have attributed deaths based on different variables. The view expressed seems tainted by an anti-AZ stance. I'm inclined to give the CEO of AZ some credence.

 

[Ethan]

Your second paragraph ìs supposition since the various nations have attributed deaths based on different variables. The view expressed seems tainted by an anti-AZ stance. I'm inclined to give the CEO of AZ some credence.

It is not supposition to look at cases and death rates through last year until now. There is simply a different time dynamic between the UK and some other large European countries. I am not anti-AZ vaccine, I have frequently said that it is a good vaccine and has a role. But it is not a matter of opinion that it is less effective than the mRNAs. Sorry if that displeases you, but that is how it is. I also believe, as do others in industry, that AZ was not the right partner for Oxford, and a partner with a track record of vaccine development and scalable manufacturing capacity would have been better.

Pascal Soriot has established his own track record of saying stuff that was later shown to be incorrect, starting with the timelines and quantities expected for the AZ vaccine. Credence is earned. He admitted yesterday that there is no evidence at all of what he says and the response in social media within the UK medical community has been in line with mine. If you have a theory about how a markedly superior effect on antibodies by mRNAs over adenovirus vectors is overturned to become a superior effect on T-cells by the adenovirus vectors, which is essentially what he was waffling about, I would be happy to see it. The conventional understanding of the human immune response to vaccines can then be rewritten.

I don't blame Soriot for puffing up his product, just as they announce they intend to make some money from it, but he was not talking science he was doing PR. I thought you would have spotted that.

Edit: See this twitter thread from Christina Pagel on UK vs Europe comparisons: link

 

[DRW]

Decided to buy some antibody tests (not convinced they are that sensitive but anyway the pictures paint the gest of what they indicate) :-

Click on pictures for bigger ones.

Late Middle aged person, 5 month post 2 x AZ, soon to be boosted(going for pfizer as the better safety profile) :-

Young person, 3 months post 2 x Pfizer :-

Old way past retirement age person, 2 weeks post Pfizer Boost , 2 AZ originally :-

Happy moving into December and changing things up, at the least the oldest has the strongest line.

 

[Crazyface]

if the current rate of new infections keeps up everyone in the country will have had the virus in four years.

 

[DRW]

if the current rate of new infections keeps up everyone in the country will have had the virus in four years.

Are you saying that as a surprise ?

I would be surprised if it takes 4 years for the vast amount of the population to catch covid at least once(whether they know about it or not).

Time will tell how this will unfold and anyone telling you they know are plain lying

 

[theoneandonly]

You do bad mouth AZ at every opportunity, did they turn you down for a job or something 🤣🙃😅😀😱

 

[Ethan]

Are you saying that as a surprise ?

I would be surprised if it takes 4 years for the vast amount of the population to catch covid at least once(whether they know about it or not).

Time will tell how this will unfold and anyone telling you they know are plain lying

That's the thing with endemic infections, they get around.

 

[DRW]

That's the thing with endemic infections, they get around.

You have been reading Pagels twitter page again, said not to. I heard you cant beat going to 'alot' of shops once you have shown symptoms whilst being so careful. Think that might help to get it around.

Prof. Christina Pagel on Twitter: "Secondly masks: the first symptoms were so innocuous it was only obvious later what they were. I was 100% convinced we didn't have Covid cos we'd been so careful. The weekend before symptoms and 1st day of, we were in *a lot* of shops. 3/8" / Twitter

Its amazing what people post and think its okay to and from people who should know better.

 

[drdel]

It is not supposition to look at cases and death rates through last year until now. There is simply a different time dynamic between the UK and some other large European countries. I am not anti-AZ vaccine, I have frequently said that it is a good vaccine and has a role. But it is not a matter of opinion that it is less effective than the mRNAs. Sorry if that displeases you, but that is how it is. I also believe, as do others in industry, that AZ was not the right partner for Oxford, and a partner with a track record of vaccine development and scalable manufacturing capacity would have been better.

Pascal Soriot has established his own track record of saying stuff that was later shown to be incorrect, starting with the timelines and quantities expected for the AZ vaccine. Credence is earned. He admitted yesterday that there is no evidence at all of what he says and the response in social media within the UK medical community has been in line with mine. If you have a theory about how a markedly superior effect on antibodies by mRNAs over adenovirus vectors is overturned to become a superior effect on T-cells by the adenovirus vectors, which is essentially what he was waffling about, I would be happy to see it. The conventional understanding of the human immune response to vaccines can then be rewritten.

I don't blame Soriot for puffing up his product, just as they announce they intend to make some money from it, but he was not talking science he was doing PR. I thought you would have spotted that.

Edit: See this twitter thread from Christina Pagel on UK vs Europe comparisons: link

Just for the record; in 2014 Pfizer made an unsolicited bid for AZ which was rejected