Coronavirus (2021) thread

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johnnymarrsbarres said:
A big factor here is the 'rival' manufacturers are all making huge amounts of profit, AZ are doing it at cost.

"Big Pharma" (sorry..horrible phrase but appropriate here) has enormous lobbying power and I suspect Pfizer have spent a lot of money to make sure they're the default vaccine.
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AZ is ‘big pharma’.

AZ pissed off the EU, so the EU screwed them back. The bloc is one of the biggest exporters of pharma. It has exported over 1 billion covid vaccines. It sets the regulations. How dumb does a company have to be to piss off a bloc of 27 countries in favour of 1 country which then subsequently dropped them?

Pfizer played a smarter game and ended up the winners. The EU also get a discounted rate on Pfizer vaccines, in part because they contributed to the development, and buying on behalf of 27 countries gives you leverage. The UK pay more per dose.

AZ had a great opportunity with an excellent vaccine and totally fucked it.
 
inbetween said:
I really doubt that symptom severity has changed too much across any of the variants.

Omicron is not a milder variant, the reason that it seems milder is because of our immunity. There is more to immunity than what the jabs bring (antibodies). Antibodies give short term protection but there is also longer term immunity from T-cells which aren't fully understood.

Short term immunity is there to provide immediate protection from an infection and vaccine success is only ever measured by whether an infection is prevented or not. Long term immunity however provides long term protection from severe disease and no-one knows for how long, perhaps forever.

The most likely scenario is we've now got a variant which is no different severity wise but it evades past generated antibodies and so we'll see more infections. However, long term immunity stops us from getting seriously ill and so we get the illusion that the variant is milder.

This is perhaps why every virologist will say that viruses tend to get less virulent and less severe, because our bodies learn to deal with COVID and COVID itself will never mutate to the degree required to evade that or it will become completely dysfunctional as a virus.
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Professionals in SA are actually saying symptoms ARE different and more mild. Apparently it’s more a throat/head type of flu-like virus.

Of course it’s early days but those are the symptoms I have.
 
Del_Bosque said:
I’d imagine it was because they were producing a vaccine at absolutely herculean speeds on a largely philanthropic (at cost) basis, and certain regulatory bodies dragged their feet over using interim data for emergency approval.

If Pfizer had results like Valneva, AZ would have been in the arms of most European and Americans by now.

Trashing it was then used to point score when it was clear that the vaccine would be needed for most of the world due to cost.
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AZ got caught up in the UK/EU point scoring game and sided with the UK. The EU punished them. Result, no AZ in the EU, nor now in the UK.

The tragedy is that AZ is an excellent vaccine and (was) available at cost. The decisions AZ made had consequences that blind Pew could have spotted.
 
inbetween said:
Omicron being milder hasn't been confirmed either. The only evidence so far is that infections tend to be milder but this isn't necessarily because the variant itself is milder, it's far more likely that our immunity is making it milder.

This variant is not a new virus that has reset our immune system and so we'll need a new vaccine, if that was true then we'd be in total lockdown. This is just a variant and the immune system can deal with it better because it's seen it before, the proof in the pudding is clearly shown by the milder symptom course.
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I didn’t say it had. The poster stated that it was not a milder version so was wondering where this has come from. The vast majority of what I have read suggest it is milder, or at least behaves differently to create a milder illness.

There’s evidence that the virus develops in a different part of the respiratory system, meaning it doesn’t get to the lungs. So you can’t confidently say it’s just due to immunity either.
 
BobKowalski said:
AZ is ‘big pharma’.

AZ pissed off the EU, so the EU screwed them back. The bloc is one of the biggest exporters of pharma. It has exported over 1 billion covid vaccines. It sets the regulations. How dumb does a company have to be to piss off a bloc of 27 countries in favour of 1 country which then subsequently dropped them?

Pfizer played a smarter game and ended up the winners. The EU also get a discounted rate on Pfizer vaccines, in part because they contributed to the development, and buying on behalf of 27 countries gives you leverage. The UK pay more per dose.

AZ had a great opportunity with an excellent vaccine and totally fucked it.
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Personally the 'branding' of vaccines didn't sit well with me at the time and it still doesn't.

Before this, nobody ever questioned what 'make' their jabs were as kids or when going on holiday to tropical countries etc.

The whole thing is really weird.
 
Marvin said:
See my comment about a possible change in clinical effect: lungs to bronchioles. Pneumonia can kill, bronchitis less so

The authors cautioned about the implications of their results in respect of serious illness. But this is feasible and fits symptoms seen in SA.

This is complex. We have all these people poo-pooing scientists but we are completely reliant on them now. Bizarre.
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Thanks Marvin, your point about pneumonia makes my 3 jabs here in Spain more understandable.
First I had pneumonia jab then flu a week later then covid booster 10 days later.
 
Claytop said:
Yeh I think roubaix mentioned it yesterday, re infections aren't being counted in the official tally I don't think.
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Just had a quick check, we've reported 11 million cases over the pandemic which is roughly 20% of population.

If omicron essentially bypasses that immunity completely, then the way things are reported I guess we're underreporting omicron by 20%.

But I don't know enough about how all this works to know if that's really the case or not.
 
roubaixtuesday said:
Just had a quick check, we've reported 11 million cases over the pandemic which is roughly 20% of population.

If omicron essentially bypasses that immunity completely, then the way things are reported I guess we're underreporting omicron by 20%.

But I don't know enough about how all this works to know if that's really the case or not.
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its certianly not the clearest picture, Hopefully if this news picks up enough on social media it will be clarified.
 
The bronchioles / lung thing makes a lot of sense.

Infections in the lung are proper nasty.

I picked up a lung infection from a mountaineering festival I went to last month in the lake district - thousands of people from all corners of the world gathering together - and I've only just shifted it after a course of antibiotics.

Was convinced it was covid but kept testing negative. Whatever it was it was bloody awful.

Horrible things lung infections.
 
inbetween said:
Omicron being milder hasn't been confirmed either. The only evidence so far is that infections tend to be milder but this isn't necessarily because the variant itself is milder, it's far more likely that our immunity is making it milder.

This variant is not a new virus that has reset our immune system and so we'll need a new vaccine, if that was true then we'd be in total lockdown. This is just a variant and the immune system can deal with it better because it's seen it before, the proof in the pudding is clearly shown by the milder symptom course.
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We need to prove its impact. Need an anti Vax volunteer to come fwd :)
 
BobKowalski said:
AZ got caught up in the UK/EU point scoring game and sided with the UK. The EU punished them. Result, no AZ in the EU, nor now in the UK.

The tragedy is that AZ is an excellent vaccine and (was) available at cost. The decisions AZ made had consequences that blind Pew could have spotted.
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Personally I'm of the opinion that the company producing the life saving, easily accessibly vaccine for peanuts are generally good guys.

And the governments using hearsay to slag it off and politically point score, while fueling vaccine hesitancy around the globe and therefore causing deaths, should hang their heads in shame.

No AZ in the UK? I thought it was about 90% of the Phase 1 roll out, which was the critical part? Phase 2 and the booster roll out were mainly MRNA granted but without the huge no's AZ we'd be goosed going in to winter.
 
johnnymarrsbarres said:
Personally the 'branding' of vaccines didn't sit well with me at the time and it still doesn't.

Before this, nobody ever questioned what 'make' their jabs were as kids or when going on holiday to tropical countries etc.

The whole thing is really weird.
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Agreed. I couldn't give a toss who made what vaccine or which country - it's usually a collaborative and international effort anyway. Does it work is all I care about. Had AZ first time round and was fine. Had Pfizer booster, also fine.

All I want is Covid fucked off.
 
Del_Bosque said:
Personally I'm of the opinion that the company producing the life saving, easily accessibly vaccine for peanuts are generally good guys.

And the governments using hearsay to slag it off and politically point score, while fueling vaccine hesitancy around the globe and therefore causing deaths, should hang their heads in shame.

No AZ in the UK? I thought it was about 90% of the Phase 1 roll out, which was the critical part? Phase 2 and the booster roll out were mainly MRNA granted but without the huge no's AZ we'd be goosed going in to winter.
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The woman at Oxford who led the development of the AZ jab want's knighting.

As does whoever is in charge of logistics at AZ to get it rolling into production so quickly.
 
BobKowalski said:
AZ is ‘big pharma’.

AZ pissed off the EU, so the EU screwed them back. The bloc is one of the biggest exporters of pharma. It has exported over 1 billion covid vaccines. It sets the regulations. How dumb does a company have to be to piss off a bloc of 27 countries in favour of 1 country which then subsequently dropped them?

Pfizer played a smarter game and ended up the winners. The EU also get a discounted rate on Pfizer vaccines, in part because they contributed to the development, and buying on behalf of 27 countries gives you leverage. The UK pay more per dose.

AZ had a great opportunity with an excellent vaccine and totally fucked it.
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Weren’t AZ doing it for non profit though? So they haven’t lost out in any sort of margin.
 
Data on the severity of Omicron won't be known for another fortnight, government scientists have said.

Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical sdvisor for the UK Health Security Agency, said at least 250 patients would need to be admitted to hospital before there could be a statistical analysis of the disease.

That's likely to be between Christmas and New Year or early January
 
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