The Vaccine Thread

[vonfirmath]

18 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Yeah, I remember reading about that. 

Maybe it's less severe for the mRNA vaccines?? Or maybe people weren't using the same treatment? 

I'm really glad they found the side effect, but I wish this wasn't affecting the speed of the rollout so much 😞 . I know it isn't in the US, but everywhere else it is... 

Even in the US it is affecting the rollout because places are not getting the numbers of vaccines they were expecting.

 

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, vonfirmath said:

Even in the US it is affecting the rollout because places are not getting the numbers of vaccines they were expecting.

 

Yeah, good point 😞 . 

[Penelope]

2 hours ago, kokotg said:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/

 

This is a newsletter with an agenda, written by someone who does not seem to be a clinician or anyone who would have expertise in the area. The links do not reference children, and only one small preprint references children and long Covid. 

There is very little good research on long Covid, especially in children. Even in adults, there is a lot of junk, selection bias with all of it. We should get better study out of the NIH eventually. In the meantime, talk to some pediatricians, not epidemiologists who are still working from home. Ask them how many of their under-12 or 13 patients who previously had no health conditions, have debilitating symptoms post-Covid. 

We can all make individual decisions in whether to vaccinate our own young children. I think the discussion might be different for teens vs. under-12’s.  It’s okay if we see the risks and benefits differently, even with the same information. Right now, the information is a muddle. I hope there is more for all of us to go by, by the fall or winter or next spring, or whenever vaccination becomes an option. By then the conversation around it might be very different.

1 hour ago, Not_a_Number said:

So, I don't know any of this terminology, but is it the case that the CVT was somehow different for mRNA vaccines versus AZ? Because I know there were reported deaths for AZ, whereas I haven't heard any publicized deaths for Pfizer or Moderna. 

There is more info in the other thread about this.

I do know that the Adenovirus-vector vaccines are for sure linked to a unique syndrome, which is why new names for it have been proposed. It isn’t just CVST, but CVST with thrombocytopenia, and 3 of the 6 patients after JNJ also had thrombosis in other veins, splanchnic, hepatic. Some of the AZ patients had clots in strange places, like vessels near the vertebrae. I don’t get the sense it’s a matter of, no problem, there’s a treatment for it, but something more difficult to to deal with. 

Edited April 16, 2021 by Penelope
Add word

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Penelope said:

In the meantime, talk to some pediatricians, not epidemiologists who are still working from home. Ask them how many of their under-12 or 13 patients who previously had no health conditions, have debilitating symptoms post-Covid. 

Have you talked to many pediatricians? And why are you sure they would know? 

 

2 minutes ago, Penelope said:

There is very little good research on long Covid, especially in children.

You're right. There are two small studies with selection problems. But I'd much rather use two small studies for guidance than use generalizations from other coronaviruses! Why would we assume that this data generalizes? What reason do we have to assume that? Why aren't you applying the same level of skepticism to this assumption? 

[melmichigan]

8 minutes ago, Penelope said:

I do know that the Adenovirus-vector vaccines are for sure linked to a unique syndrome, which is why new names for it have been proposed. It isn’t just CVST, but CVST with thrombocytopenia, and 3 of the 6 patients after JNJ had thrombosis in other veins, splanchnic, hepatic. Some of the AZ patients had clots in strange places, like vessels near the vertebrae. I don’t get the sense it’s a matter of, no problem, there’s a treatment for it, but something more difficult to to deal with. 

We only have numbers for CVST for background comparison.  We don't have the numbers for CSVT with thrombocytopenia in order to tell if the vaccines are indeed an increase in risk.  We don't have good diagnosis criteria established for doctors to be watching for.  

Edited April 16, 2021 by melmichigan

[Not_a_Number]

Here's an article that actually cites people working in children's hospitals: 

https://khn.org/news/article/children-covid-long-hauler-clinics-pediatric-hospitals/

These are not people working from home. 

 

Quote from article: 
 

"At Norton Children’s Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, clinicians set up a clinic in October after receiving calls from area pediatricians who had patients with long-haul symptoms." 

 

So... at least some pediatricians must be noticing an issue. 

[kokotg]

5 minutes ago, Penelope said:

 

There is very little good research on long Covid, especially in children. Even in adults, there is a lot of junk, selection bias with all of it. We should get better study out of the NIH eventually. In the meantime, talk to some pediatricians, not epidemiologists who are still working from home. Ask them how many of their under-12 or 13 patients who previously had no health conditions, have debilitating symptoms post-Covid. 

 

Sure, there's not a lot of research yet. The link cited one study from Italy and also numbers from UK Office for National Statistics: 

Quote

The UK Office for National Statistics's latest report estimates that 12.9 per cent of UK children aged 2 to 11, and 14.5 per cent of children aged 12 to 16, still have symptoms five weeks after their first infection. Almost 500,000 UK children have tested positive for covid-19 since March 2020.

I find that more informative than I would a survey of random pediatricians, personally. I find the idea that epidemiologists are a less reliable source of information than anecdotal accounts from pediatricians because they're "still working from home" a little bewildering, actually. 

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, kokotg said:

I find that more informative than I would a survey of random pediatricians, personally. I find the idea that epidemiologists are a less reliable source of information than anecdotal accounts from pediatricians because they're "still working from home" a little bewildering, actually. 

Apparently epidemiologists are just getting their information from thin air. 

Anyway, there are long COVID pediatric clinics popping up all over the place. They are clearly seeing patients, because otherwise they wouldn't be there -- no one was going to start a new clinic for no reason. 

[Penelope]

21 minutes ago, melmichigan said:

We only have numbers for CVST for background comparison.  We don't have the numbers for CSVT with thrombocytopenia in order to tell if the vaccines are indeed an increase in risk.  We don't have good diagnosis criteria established for doctors to be watching for.  

 

17 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Here's an article that actually cites people working in children's hospitals: 

https://khn.org/news/article/children-covid-long-hauler-clinics-pediatric-hospitals/

These are not people working from home. 

 

Quote from article: 
 

"At Norton Children’s Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, clinicians set up a clinic in October after receiving calls from area pediatricians who had patients with long-haul symptoms." 

 

So... at least some pediatricians must be noticing an issue. 

Eh, I was pretty clear that I am sure there are cases. You think it might be a huge thing, I think it might be a small thing. We both probably hope that I’m right. 🙂 Considering that over a year later, there have been millions of children infected, and we aren’t hearing a lot more about this, including among those we know personally, that’s where I’m coming from. 
 

And I’m not worried about a stuffy nose or a cough that lasts a few weeks beyond the infection, and those kinds of things are included in these surveys that have been done. Am I concerned about things that are more significant than that, sure! 
Even that newsletter above said this “Most medical bodies say it normally takes a few days or weeks to recover from covid-19, and that most will make a full recovery within 12 weeks.” 
 

Again, this is a judgment call that we will make for our own families, and hopefully we will gain better information in time.

15 minutes ago, kokotg said:

Sure, there's not a lot of research yet. The link cited one study from Italy and also numbers from UK Office for National Statistics: 

I find that more informative than I would a survey of random pediatricians, personally. I find the idea that epidemiologists are a less reliable source of information than anecdotal accounts from pediatricians because they're "still working from home" a little bewildering, actually. 

Okay, that’s your preference, and I don’t. Not that epidemiological data isn’t useful, but we don’t really have much of that yet, so epidemiologists have no idea right now, anyway.

I prefer those who see real people and also read the research (when we have some) and communicate with others who actually see children. Info just as “scientific”, and with better context than reading biased surveys off the printed page, IMO. 

Edited April 16, 2021 by Penelope

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, Penelope said:

prefer those who see real people and also reads the research and communicate with others who actually see children. Info just as “scientific”, and with better context than reading biased surveys off the printed page, IMO. 

What do you mean by a biased survey? 

 

1 minute ago, Penelope said:

Considering that over a year later, there have been millions of children infected, and we aren’t hearing a lot more about this, including among those we know personally, that’s where I’m coming from. 

In terms of people we know personally, we know people who were explicitly told by their pediatrician that they were seeing issues post-COVID. I don't know very many kids myself who've had COVID, so I can't judge on that basis. 

[Matryoshka]

On 4/15/2021 at 1:07 PM, ktgrok said:

I agree, other than the logisitical issue of storage for those. I think where we can we should use the mRNA ones, no matter what country. But in some areas that may be very hard logistically, and an easier to store/transport one might be better than no vaccine. 

I'm really hoping the new Novavax pans out as well as the trials say - I think in trials it had mRNA level efficacy, but doesn't require refrigeration, if I'm remembering correctly.  That would really help if we had one like that.

[Corraleno]

There are three HUGE issues with that Oxford "study": 

(1) They are counting incidences of CVT, not the much rarer CVT plus thrombocytopenia (low platelet count), which is the problem with AZ. The levels of CVT they find with the mRNA vaccines are actually no higher than normal "background" levels.

(2) Their calculation of "4.1 per million" for the mRNA vaccines was based on only TWO cases. In reporting the rate of CVT in covid patients, they stated that the incidence of CVT was significantly higher in those with previous history of cardiovascular disease, including several who had CVT diagnoses prior to getting covid. So clearly they have that information in the NHS database, yet they fail to mention it in reference to the TWO patients who developed CVT after an mRNA vaccine — there is an obvious difference in risk factors if those two people were in their 70s-80s with heart disease vs previously healthy people in their 30s. Why did they not include that data?

(3) They calculated the number of CVT cases in the UK for the mRNA vaccines (2), but instead of calculating data from the same sources for AZ,  they used an estimate from the EU for the number of CVT cases with AZ while ignoring the number of CVT + thrombocytopenia cases which was the whole point of the EU report that they cite.

Gee, I wonder what motivated a couple of professors of Psychiatry at Oxford to write an article that purposely conflates CVT and CVT-thrombocytopenia, and purposely compares data from completely different sources, in order to say "hey, the mRNA vaccines are just as dangerous as our vaccine, and besides covid is way worse!" 

 

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Corraleno said:

(1) They are counting incidences of CVT, not the much rarer CVT plus thrombocytopenia (low platelet count), which is the problem with AZ. The levels of CVT they find with the mRNA vaccines are actually no higher than normal "background" levels.

OK, that's what I was wondering -- I vaguely remembered there was some SPECIFIC condition for AZ that wasn't occurring with anything else. 

Man, they are really not covering themselves with glory here. 

[Corraleno]

3 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

OK, that's what I was wondering -- I vaguely remembered there was some SPECIFIC condition for AZ that wasn't occurring with anything else. 

Man, they are really not covering themselves with glory here. 

It's infuriating, because this was clearly a deliberate attempt to conflate two different things in order to try to disguise the issue with the Oxford/AZ vaccine. And that is just plain slimy.

[Not_a_Number]

19 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

It's infuriating, because this was clearly a deliberate attempt to conflate two different things in order to try to disguise the issue with the Oxford/AZ vaccine. And that is just plain slimy.

They've been slimy the whole pandemic. It's been really gross to watch. 

[Melissa Louise]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-17/bhutan-had-one-of-the-worlds-most-successful-coronvaccine-drives/100069540

[Corraleno]

5 hours ago, TCB said:

I was just watching Dr John Campbell today and he was talking about a pre print paper by scientists from Oxford - not the same ones involved with the vaccine apparently - talking about the risks of Cerebral Venous Thrombosis and Portal vein Thrombosis with Covid, mRNA vaccines and the AZ vaccine. Pretty surprising figures! Will try and link the podcast.

 

Not sure what to make of it.

Campbell's totally uncritical acceptance of any report that agrees with his own beliefs is why I no longer watch him. He should definitely know that the issue with AZ is CVT + thrombocytopenia, not just CVT, so he is either shockingly uninformed or he is being disingenuous in this video — either way, not someone whose opinion I am going to give any weight to.

He was gaga over the Spanish preprint that purported to show success with treating covid patients with Vit D, which is something he has pushed since the beginning of the pandemic, and he failed to notice any of the huge red flags in that study, or even read the comments on the preprint from actual experts. That preprint was pulled almost immediately, despite Campbell claiming it provided "totally convincing" and "overwhelming" proof of the efficacy of Vit D treatment. 

He makes serious mistakes ALL the time and gets called out in the comments, and although he sometimes corrects those errors in future videos, unless someone watches him every day they are unlikely to see those corrections. He is not a doctor, he's nurse who got a PhD in education focusing on teaching nursing, and he has no real expertise in the areas he talks about. He's just a random guy on YouTube who has amassed nearly a million followers largely on the basis of videos about HCQ, ivermectin, Vit D, etc. 

[Not_a_Number]

22 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

He was gaga over the Spanish preprint that purported to show success with treating covid patients with Vit D, which is something he has pushed since the beginning of the pandemic, and he failed to notice any of the huge red flags in that study, or even read the comments on the preprint from actual experts. That preprint was pulled almost immediately, despite Campbell claiming it provided "totally convincing" and "overwhelming" proof of the efficacy of Vit D treatment. 

I haven't watched him in ages because it was totally unclear to me why anyone thought he knew things that they didn't, but I have to say that even I hadn't, this would have been a serious red flag to me. That study was so obviously not randomized I that I could CHECK that it wasn't myself by running some back-of-the-envelope calculations without navigating away. (I used Google to calculate an exponent for me in the search bar.) It wasn't even close. 

[ktgrok]

An old middle school friend is asking for "source info" on what concerns experts have on long term effects of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and I'm making myself silly trying to explain that I can't find sources on that because the experts don't HAVE long term concerns. I already linked info on side effects on vaccines in general, autoimmune diseases linked to vaccinations, and how the mRNA tech works. 

At this point, the conversation is reminding me of when my husband and I were on our honeymoon in Scotland, and we stopped to take photos by Loch Ness where I spotted some wild blackberry bushes. I picked some blackberries, said out loud, "hey, blackberries!"  and started to eat them. My husband kind of freaked out and said, "wait! how do you know they are not poisonous" and all I could answer was, "because they are blackberries."

[ktgrok]

1 hour ago, kand said:

Have you shared the article about the timeline of side effects from vaccines in general? I can dig it back up again, if helpful. It might (or might not) be helpful to explain that the mRNA itself doesn't persist in the body for long. It's rather fragile and breaks down pretty quickly after doing its thing.

That would be helpful, I think. Hard to know at this point. I did share about how long mRNA lasts in the body, but not sure my "source" was enough....I want to say "get a biology textbook" at this point. 

[popmom]

4 hours ago, ktgrok said:

An old middle school friend is asking for "source info" on what concerns experts have on long term effects of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and I'm making myself silly trying to explain that I can't find sources on that because the experts don't HAVE long term concerns. I already linked info on side effects on vaccines in general, autoimmune diseases linked to vaccinations, and how the mRNA tech works. 

At this point, the conversation is reminding me of when my husband and I were on our honeymoon in Scotland, and we stopped to take photos by Loch Ness where I spotted some wild blackberry bushes. I picked some blackberries, said out loud, "hey, blackberries!"  and started to eat them. My husband kind of freaked out and said, "wait! how do you know they are not poisonous" and all I could answer was, "because they are blackberries."

Is she asking for source info because she’s genuinely interested or is she just trying to prove a point? This is something I’ve run into recently. It’s insane that someone will trust some quack overseas who kills cancer patients by “treating” their cancer with mistletoe and a virus, and then they want me to source info to prove the vaccines are safe. Ummmm... Google? Pubmed? An anatomy and physiology textbook??? And yet we do have evidence of long term harm from the virus. 

Edited April 17, 2021 by popmom

[ktgrok]

8 hours ago, popmom said:

Is she asking for source info because she’s genuinely interested or is she just trying to prove a point? This is something I’ve run into recently. It’s insane that someone will trust some quack overseas who kills cancer patients by “treating” their cancer with mistletoe and a virus, and then they want me to source info to prove the vaccines are safe. Ummmm... Google? Pubmed? An anatomy and physiology textbook??? And yet we do have evidence of long term harm from the virus. 

I really am not sure. I'm HOPING he's actually trying to just get a lot of info on his page in order to influence others, as he doesn't seem the type to be vaccine hesitant. He's super smart, and architect, and he was living in Spain during the worst of the Covid outbreak there. He was one of the ones on his balcony cheering each evening, he saw the number of deaths, etc. 

But yeah, exactly....I'm like, get a basic biology textbook? My husband says there is a tiktok thing with a guy who explains things just by saying, "because of the way that it is" and that's where I'm at...mRNA is the way that it is, lol. 

6 hours ago, kand said:

This comes from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: https://www.chop.edu/news/long-term-side-effects-covid-19-vaccine

Thank you!

[Laura Corin]

Infection after vaccination - UK.  This is from self-reported data on the Zoe symptom study app. A mixture of Pfizer and AZ.

Edited April 18, 2021 by Laura Corin

[Corraleno]

Congress is currently investigating Emergent Biosolutions, the company that contaminated 15 million doses of J&J vaccine and had a history of poor quality control, inadequate disinfection protocols resulting in equipment contaminated with bacteria and mold, failure to follow proper lab and testing procedures, and what the FDA referred to as "data integrity issues." Excerpt from the linked article:

"The committees are specifically looking at the role Dr. Robert Kadlec, a former consultant to Emergent and Trump’s assistant secretary for preparedness and response, played in helping the company win the contract. ... Kadlec “appears to have pushed for this award despite indications that Emergent did not have the ability to reliably fulfill the contract.”
....

 

An FDA inspection of the Baltimore plant in April 2020 revealed that Emergent did not have the necessary personnel to produce a coronavirus vaccine. Another inspection, in June, found that Emergent’s plan for producing desperately needed coronavirus vaccines was inadequate due to poorly trained staff and quality control problems.

Despite Emergent falling short on federal inspections, the Trump administration paid $628 million to the company in June to manufacture coronavirus vaccines.... Emergent’s Baltimore plant wasn’t approved by the Food and Drug Administration, so none of the doses produced at that site were ever distributed or made their way into Americans’ arms.
....

According to the letter, after Kadlec was confirmed in the Trump administration, Emergent received millions of dollars in federal contracts from his agency, including contracts for the stockpile “that were awarded without competitive bidding.” Emergent encouraged oversight of the stockpile to be transferred from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response, under Kadlec’s control"

 

[Penelope]

Some of the information in the FDA report from the Emergent inspection is just horrible. 🤢 

[Doug4907]

The latest news in Australia:

• 6 confirmed clotting events as of 23 Apr 2021 from AZ jabs.  These numbers when released refer to events that happened some days before, as it takes some days to confirm that the clotting is FROM AZ jab
• 1.1M doses of AZ as of 23 Apr 2021
• Assuming a delay between the above 2 bullet points, PERHAPS 8 clotting events per 1.1M AZ doses (all first doses).  Equates 1 in 138,000 AZ shots.  Assuming no delay in reporting the rate is 1 in 180,000.
• Real numbers, but very low occurrence rate. 

[Penelope]

1 hour ago, Doug4907 said:

The latest news in Australia:

• 6 confirmed clotting events as of 23 Apr 2021 from AZ jabs.  These numbers when released refer to events that happened some days before, as it takes some days to confirm that the clotting is FROM AZ jab
• 1.1M doses of AZ as of 23 Apr 2021
• Assuming a delay between the above 2 bullet points, PERHAPS 8 clotting events per 1.1M AZ doses (all first doses).  Equates 1 in 138,000 AZ shots.  Assuming no delay in reporting the rate is 1 in 180,000.
• Real numbers, but very low occurrence rate. 

Do you know if it was primarily younger people?

I think 1 in less than 200,000 would be too high of a risk for me to recommend my young adult take it. It’s a pretty horrible complication. 

In the US, we should hear the updated numbers for JNJ today and a decision about the pause.

[Corraleno]

(Moving this here from the Personal Experiences thread)

The CDC stats on breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated people are here. 

Out of 87 million fully vaccinated people in the US, there were 7,157 documented breakthrough cases, which represents 0.008% of the fully vaccinated population, and 88 of those people died, which puts the covid death rate for fully vaccinated people at 0.0001%. Obviously those odds are vastly lower than the odds of dying for the unvaccinated.

In all likelihood, the % of breakthrough cases is much higher than 0.008%, and the odds of dying of covid after being fully vaxxed are actually even lower than 0.0001%. 

[Corraleno]

Small study in the New England Journal of Medicine from Rockefeller University comparing 417 fully vaccinated employees with 1491 unvaxed. There were 32 covid cases in the unvaxed group (2.15%) vs 2 cases in the vaxed group (0.48%), although the vaxed group had much higher risk of exposure (18% HCWs or first responders, vs 1.2% in the unvaxed group).

Both of the breakthrough cases were mild, despite involving variants with multiple mutations of concern. One person had a variant with the E484K mutation (associated with evasion of antibodies) as well as characteristics similar to B117 (associated with higher viral loads and higher rates of transmission). This person had a very high viral load, but also had very high antibody levels, and all symptoms were resolved within a week.

Both cases were also infected fairly close to the 2 week mark after their second shot, so they may not have developed full immunity by then: one tested positive at 2.5 weeks, so was likely exposed before the 2 week mark, and the other had an unvaccinated partner who tested positive three weeks after her first shot, so he may have been infected (and contagious) around the two week mark.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2105000

(moved from Personal Experience thread)

Edited April 23, 2021 by Corraleno

[Corraleno]

[x-posted from the Wuhan thread, it seems more relevant here]

https://www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/files/coronavirus/ciscommunityvaccinationpaper20210417complete.pdf

 

I found that study very difficult to read, but this jumped out at me:

"There was no evidence that reductions in odds of new infections differed between the Pfizer- BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine (Figure 4A; Supplementary Table 7) whether the vaccine was received 0 to 7 days ago (P=0.965), 8 to 20 days ago (P=1.00), or ≥21 days ago (P=0.998) for Pfizer-BioNTech ≥21 days ago, one dose only, vs Oxford-AstraZeneca ≥21 days ago, one or two doses). There was also no evidence that reductions in odds of new infections differed between those post second Pfizer dose and those not vaccinated but previously PCR/antibody-positive (P=1.00)."

So they're saying that there was no difference between AZ and Pfizer 0-20 days after the first dose, or more than 21 days after ONE dose of Pfizer or one or TWO doses of AZ.

Why are they comparing one dose of Pfizer to two doses of AZ??? Where is the data comparing efficacy 14 days after the second dose of Pfizer? The only comment about the infection rate after 2 doses of Pfizer is that it was equally as effective as prior infection with covid.

It should also be noted that the UK waits 3 months before the second shot, which the Brazilian study accidentally showed provided better efficacy for the AZ vaccine, but there is no reason to believe that 3 months is better than 3 weeks for Pfizer. So they are not using Pfizer the way it was designed to be used, and they're still not reporting the efficacy after the 2nd dose.

I'm getting really suspicious of these unpublished press-release-style "studies" by Oxford scientists that fudge their data to try to prove that their vaccine is just as good as the mRNA vaccines.

ETA: Who wants to bet that John Campbell will have a video up in the next couple of days touting this study as incontrovertible proof that AZ works just as well as Pfizer?

Edited April 24, 2021 by Corraleno

[Not_a_Number]

27 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

I'm getting really suspicious of these unpublished press-release-style "studies" by Oxford scientists trying to show that their vaccine is just as good as the mRNA vaccines.

I don't even want to try to read them anymore, since they all seem to be filled with lies. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice... 

[Catwoman]

I would love to see a study of all of the major vaccines being compared head-to-head during the exact same time period. 

[Penelope]

2 hours ago, Catwoman said:

I would love to see a study of all of the major vaccines being compared head-to-head during the exact same time period. 

Yes, same place, same variants, and for longer than a week or two after vaccination. I don’t think we will get that, though. 🙂
 

I am speculating here, but wouldn’t there also be a synergistic effect? In the trials, most everyone was walking around unvaccinated except for the few people in the vaccine group in a community. But when you vaccinate large percentages of the population and circulating virus is down, the differences between vaccines may be less stark than they would be in a trial. Or even if they were present, they would be less likely to show up. 

Either way, I’d go out on a limb and say that they will all have similar reductions in hospitalization and death. Unless some true immune-escape variant comes along. 

Edited April 24, 2021 by Penelope

[Ausmumof3]

On 4/24/2021 at 1:41 AM, Penelope said:

Do you know if it was primarily younger people?

I think 1 in less than 200,000 would be too high of a risk for me to recommend my young adult take it. It’s a pretty horrible complication. 

In the US, we should hear the updated numbers for JNJ today and a decision about the pause.

One case was in an 88 year old man.

[Doug4907]

On 4/24/2021 at 1:41 AM, Penelope said:

Do you know if it was primarily younger people?

I think 1 in less than 200,000 would be too high of a risk for me to recommend my young adult take it. It’s a pretty horrible complication. 

In the US, we should hear the updated numbers for JNJ today and a decision about the pause.

Hi Penelope,

As Ausmumof3 said, one was a male 80 (I think 80 yo, Ausmumof3 read 88), another was female 48 (fatal), another was a male 49.    Recapping, 6 TTS cases, 3 of which were from about 50 and over.  I don't have details of the others.

In Australia, our Gov has declared that the cases of TTS clotting are mainly confined to those below 50.  The Aus gov has overwhelmingly backed the AZ vaccine, and has too much at stake to stop its use.

4 weeks ago, my wife and I had the AZ vaccine, when it was obvious that that was the only vaccine that was on offer was AZ.  I am 72 with severe lung disease.  Both of us had mild "flu" symptoms on day 2 and 3, but all OK since then.

Take care,

Doug

 

[Not_a_Number]

16 hours ago, Penelope said:

But when you vaccinate large percentages of the population and circulating virus is down, the differences between vaccines may be less stark than they would be in a trial.

Only if you get an underpowered study. You'd do relative risk, not absolute, anyway. 

[Spy Car]

If a person abroad in a "hot" country has received a (relatively ineffective) Sinovax vaccine (and assuming adequate vaccine supply is not issue), are there medical contraindications to getting a second vaccine such as Pfizer or Moderna to boost protection?

Would that be a positive move if supply was ample? Or not. Or unknown?

Bill

 

[Corraleno]

2 hours ago, Spy Car said:

If a person abroad in a "hot" country has received a (relatively ineffective) Sinovax vaccine (and assuming adequate vaccine supply is not issue), are there medical contraindications to getting a second vaccine such as Pfizer or Moderna to boost protection?

Would that be a positive move if supply was ample? Or not. Or unknown?

Bill

 

Apparently there is a current study in Hong Kong on exactly that — mixing Sinovac with Pfizer. There is also a study in the UK on mixing AZ with Pfizer or Moderna, and one in Azerbaijan on mixing AZ & Sputnik, but those aren't totally comparable since AZ and Sputnik are viral vectors and Sinovac is a whole virus vaccine. So basically we don't have data on that yet, but it is under study.

[Spy Car]

5 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

Apparently there is a current study in Hong Kong on exactly that — mixing Sinovac with Pfizer. There is also a study in the UK on mixing AZ with Pfizer or Moderna, and one in Azerbaijan on mixing AZ & Sputnik, but those aren't totally comparable since AZ and Sputnik are viral vectors and Sinovac is a whole virus vaccine. So basically we don't have data on that yet, but it is under study.

Very much appreciated!

Bill

[TCB]

Has anyone seen the article about the school in Florida that is banning vaccinated teachers from being near students? I saw it on the BBC news page and will try and link it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56905752

 

I just can not imagine what possible mechanism they think could cause problems for other people.

 

ETA - I had previously viewed the anti-vax movement as misguided and benign but their response to the pandemic has opened my eyes. I wonder how vocally anti-vaccine they would be if they actually had to live in a world where no one was vaccinated against anything. Not quite so safe for them to choose not to vaccinate.

ETA 2 - I say this as someone who has always been a cautious vaxxer, who investigated prior to going ahead, and who definitely did not go with the usual schedule prescribed for babies and children in the US. Although I definitely don’t mean that in any way as negative to those that do follow the schedule.

Edited April 27, 2021 by TCB
Eta

[ktgrok]

1 minute ago, TCB said:

Has anyone seen the article about the school in Florida that is banning vaccinated teachers from being near students? I saw it on the BBC news page and will try and link it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56905752

 

I just can not imagine what possible mechanism they think could cause problems for other people.

I guess wealthy crazy is still crazy. 30 grand a year so a middle schooler can be "educated" by people that don't know that non live vaccines can't effect other people??

[TCB]

2 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

I guess wealthy crazy is still crazy. 30 grand a year so a middle schooler can be "educated" by people that don't know that non live vaccines can't effect other people??

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this being talked about in the last week or so. I think it may be circulating much more widely, and given credence much more widely, than we might imagine. Unbelievable that that is so though!

[TCB]

Honestly I am so tired of all this craziness. Not only have these people done absolutely nothing to help the situation this past year, they are now trying to disrupt progress out of it. I honestly can’t understand their motivation.

[ktgrok]

5 minutes ago, TCB said:

Honestly I am so tired of all this craziness. Not only have these people done absolutely nothing to help the situation this past year, they are now trying to disrupt progress out of it. I honestly can’t understand their motivation.

And MIami was really hard hit in the beginning, it's just insane. You'd think people would learn. 

Of course, you'd expect someone with a career in EDUCATION to have a basic working knowledge of how to research how vaccines work. Which...I guess is not true. 

[Wheres Toto]

I don't understand how they could even enforce this restriction.   Are teachers required to reveal their vaccination status?   What if they just lie?

I mean, I can see how a private employer would/could require vaccines for people working in certain industries, but how do you prove a negative?   Here's my lack of a vaccine card?

I would bet nobody is wearing masks at that school as well. 

[ktgrok]

3 minutes ago, Wheres Toto said:

I don't understand how they could even enforce this restriction.   Are teachers required to reveal their vaccination status?   What if they just lie?

I mean, I can see how a private employer would/could require vaccines for people working in certain industries, but how do you prove a negative?   Here's my lack of a vaccine card?

I would bet nobody is wearing masks at that school as well. 

Yeah...I guess spying on social media, etc? It's insane. I mean, we are talking about people that don't think the virus is contagious enough or serious enough to require distance/etc but the VACCINE is??? Like, they know COVID has side effects (aka symptoms), right?

I want to tell them to not live in fear! But that if they ARE worried that the vaccine is contagious, they can mask and distance, lol. 

Seriously, I'm sort of okay if unvaccinated crazy people want to avoid my vaccinated biology affirming self. But it isn't good for our society, where we need to reach herd immunity. 

[mommyoffive]

Vaccines Appear to Be Slowing Spread of Covid-19 Infections (msn.com)

[teachermom2834]

I was going to post asking if other people are getting this particular anti-vaccine pushback but then I decided to step away from the computer. 
 

I have people in my life that believe this - that as a vaccinated woman I can cause miscarriages and infertility in other woman. I have someone who directly believes if I am around her young adult daughters I am endangering their future fertility. So where I am, with all the worry about vaccine passports, it is those that have been vaccinated getting shunned.

But how could I even argue with such? I just announce my status so that everyone knows that I am vaxxed and can distance from me. The last thing I want is for someone blaming me because they can’t get pregnant. Such a mess. But yes people believe this. 

[JennyD]

1 hour ago, teachermom2834 said:

I have people in my life that believe this - that as a vaccinated woman I can cause miscarriages and infertility in other woman. I have someone who directly believes if I am around her young adult daughters I am endangering their future fertility.

Good grief.  What is this, 1421?  

So sorry that you are dealing with this craziness.  

[teachermom2834]

2 minutes ago, JennyD said:

Good grief.  What is this, 1421?  

So sorry that you are dealing with this craziness.  

Thanks. I’m over it. I have been dealing with craziness this whole time and have had to take a “you do you” approach and protect my family as I saw fit. I understand that the actions of irresponsible people effect everyone but there was just nothing I could do about it and I have to survive. I can’t just only patronize businesses that are careful because there are things I need. So I am so so happy to be vaccinated and be able to more comfortably get an eye exam or a haircut or whatever I had put off because my community takes no precautions. 
 

It is annoying to run up against this stuff but now that I am vaccinated I just can’t let it bother me. The irony of it above all is that the exact people that don’t want to be around me for fear of “catching” my vaccine are the very people that knowingly went out with Covid, having decided it was no big deal. Gracious.

Disclaimer- I know people are going to jump on me and say I should still not be around unmasked people and that I can still get Covid even after vaccination. I know it. I read all the reports too. But y’all- I have to live and this is where I live. I needed an eye exam and new glasses. So I am going to go about fulfilling needs even as my community is not careful. I can no longer assume responsibility for spread of Covid when the community has decided not to mask or vax or distance. I am quite sure I am not the problem here.