The COVID-2019 Thread

[Chittychangchang]

Army brought in for the city of Liverpool, UK.
Mass free testing for all.

[Mandaloopy]

It just hit general population here.
Bugger.
I rather suspect the lockdown measures are going to be a little more severe than in merry old England, suffice to say I am back to online "teaching", if you could even call it that.

[OhOh]

Oh dear.

Director Dimas Covas said in a TV interview that one volunteer in the trial has died, but that the death is not related to the vaccine.

Indeed.

Oops looks like the chinkies nicked the wrong one

Pfizer Soars as Vaccine Prevents 90% of Covid Cases in Study
By Robert Langreth , Naomi Kresge , and Riley Griffin

November 9, 2020, 6:45 PM GMT+7 Updated on November 10, 2020, 3:35 AM GMT+7

"With effectiveness for the first vaccines previously expected to be in the range of 60% to 70%, a rate of more than 90% “is just extraordinary,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on a call with reporters.

The data do have limits
.
It isn’t known how well the shot works in key subgroups, such as the elderly.

And it isn’t known whether the vaccine prevents severe disease, as none of the participants who got Covid-19 in this round of analysis had such cases, said
William Gruber, Pfizer senior vice president for vaccine clinical research and development.

Outside researchers said they would

need much more data,

including the safety information, to assess how good the vaccine is.

Assuming the encouraging early results are upheld and the vaccine is approved, use in the general public would still be a ways off, with those at the highest risk likely to get it first."


Deep-Freeze Hurdle Makes Pfizer’s Vaccine One for the Rich

Bloomberg News November 11, 2020, 4:00 AM GMT+7 Updated on November 11, 2020, 11:11 AM GMT+7

"Vaccine goes bad five days after thawing, requires two shots

Many nations face costly ramp up of cold-chain infrastructure"

One presumes once, the alleged vaccine has been cleared by a countries health service, the delivery and storage infrastructure has been created and the customer's loan agreements have been signed, would be a more logical time to decide which vaccine is of use to their own citizens.

Rather than relying on a biased company's "announcement".

[panama hat]

Deep-Freeze Hurdle Makes Pfizer’s Vaccine One for the Rich

Shouldn't be an issue as it will be governments who purchase them - here in NZ the PM has stated that storage isn't a problem for the Pfizer/BioNTech (interestingly a company started in Germany by German Turks) product.

I'd rather trust this than the Russian or Chinese product - but it really doesn't matter who, what's important is that we get a vaccine

[Klondyke]

I'd rather trust this than the Russian or Chinese product -

"I'd rather die with this than than stay alive with Russian or Chinese product..."

(BTW, products of who do you wear - beside the ones bought on Champs-Élysées - and/or what consumer products for everyday use do you buy around?)

[harrybarracuda]

I don't mind if people use the chinky or russian vaccines, even if you can't trust the results.

I mean if it kills a load of people that's a load less spreaders, right?

[misskit]

Russia’s Sputnik V Coronavirus Vaccine 92% Effective – Interim Data

Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine is 92% effective, its developers said Wednesday as the global race heats up over mass vaccination to slow the spread of the pandemic that has killed nearly 1.3 million people and battered economies worldwide.


Interim results showed that 20 of the 16,000 volunteers who received both Sputnik V doses have contracted Covid-19, the Russian Health Ministry, state-run Gamaleya research center and Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said in a statement.

MORE Russia’s Sputnik V Coronavirus Vaccine 92% Effective – Interim Data - The Moscow Times

[harrybarracuda]

Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine is 92% effective, its developers said Wednesday

Of course they did.

[harrybarracuda]

It sounds like this Brasilian geezer is having trouble getting his (chinky) story straight.

Director Dimas Covas said in a TV interview that one volunteer in the trial has died, but that the death is not related to the vaccine.

Covas said on TV Cultura late Monday that a volunteer had died, but on Tuesday he said he had just been giving a hypothetical example and could not confirm details about the case for ethical reasons.

Backers blast halt to Brazil trials of Chinese-made vaccine

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Russia’s Sputnik V Coronavirus Vaccine 92% Effective – Interim Data

Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine is 92% effective, its developers said Wednesday as the global race heats up over mass vaccination to slow the spread of the pandemic that has killed nearly 1.3 million people and battered economies worldwide.


Interim results showed that 20 of the 16,000 volunteers who received both Sputnik V doses have contracted Covid-19, the Russian Health Ministry, state-run Gamaleya research center and Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said in a statement.

MORE Russia’s Sputnik V Coronavirus Vaccine 92% Effective – Interim Data - The Moscow Times

Given that it is Russia, I am surprised it was not 110% affective.

[harrybarracuda]

Given that it is Russia, I am surprised it was not 110% affective.

Perhaps the "Central peoples committee for make indisputable vote glorious leader Vladimir Putin" was not involved in that one.

[panama hat]

Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine is 92% effective

Not a dry eye was left in the crowd bar Klodyke and OhOh's who simply said:

"See, 2% better. Russian vaccine better vaccine. Be best."

[misskit]

How Ticketmaster Plans to Check Your Vaccine Status for Concerts

Monday's news that pharmaceutical company Pfizer's early results on a new COVID-19 vaccine showed a 90% efficacy rate on an initial clinical trial have given concert professionals hope that the business can start mounting a return in 2021. As part of that preparation, Ticketmaster has been working on a framework for post-pandemic fan safety that uses smart phones to verify fans' vaccination status or whether they've tested negative for the coronavirus within a 24 to 72 hour window.


Many of details of the plan, which is still in development phase, will rely on three separate components -- the Ticketmaster digital ticket app, third party health information companies like CLEAR Health Pass or IBM's Digital Health Pass and testing and vaccine distribution providers like Labcorp and the CVS Minute Clinic.

MORE How Ticketmaster Plans to Check Your Vaccine Status for Concerts: Exclusive | Billboard

[Troy]

The UK passes the 50,000 deaths mark *again* and it looks very much out of control there, France, and Italy. Figures in Germany were looking very ominous last week but the numbers appear to have stabilised following their lockdown light. I heard that parts of Austria (Linz area) are really bad (figures in the 1000/100K population) so another area to stay well away from.

[harrybarracuda]

The UK passes the 50,000 deaths mark *again*

Again? Are people dying twice?

[Troy]

^ The UK passed the 50,000 deaths in early June. However the UK redefined their stats from covid on death certificate to positive covid within 28 days of death. It made the stats look better...for a while at least.

Covid is out of control in many parts of the UK. Cummings should have been sacked. Bo-Jo needs the services of a red hot poker.

[harrybarracuda]

Perhaps baldy orange loser is out to kill as many Americans as he can.

[Mandaloopy]

A booze ban until this stage of lockdown is over.
It's been a bit mental today getting everything online again and an ice cold beer would be lovely. Oh well...tea it is...

[HuangLao]

Perhaps baldy orange loser is out to kill as many Americans as he can.

That's been obvious since last March/April, where he and his loyal circle have done little to stem the tide or even expand on any practical containment.

[OhOh]

Rather than relying on a biased company's "announcement".

Pfizer CEO sells $5.6mn of stock on record surge the day he praised Covid-19 vaccine’s 90% effectiveness, denies insider trading

12 Nov, 2020 03:50 / Updated 6 hours ago

"CEO Albert Bourla sold off 60 percent of his shares in drugmaker Pfizer the day its stock price peaked following a favorable report on the effectiveness of its Covid-19 vaccine – but the company insists the sale was kosher.

Pfizer defended its CEO’s sale of 132,508 shares on Monday at near-peak value, claiming in a statement on Wednesday that the trade had been set up back in August as “part of Dr. Bourla’s personal financial planning” in keeping with a pre-established plan allowing “major shareholders and insiders of exchange-listed corporations to trade a predetermined number of shares at a predetermined time.”

The stock was sold at $41.94 per share, near the peak of its value on Monday, netting Bourla a cool $5.6 million. Share price would climb to $41.99, buoyed by Monday’s report that Pfizer’s vaccine was 90 percent effective against the novel coronavirus, before inching back down – as of the close of trading on Wednesday, it sits at $38.50.

Bourla isn’t the only Pfizer exec to cash in suspiciously on the vaccine news, either. Executive vice president and chief corporate affairs officer Sally Susman made $1.8 million off her sale of 43,000 shares in the company.

The company’s claim that Bourla's sale was prearranged is only likely to fuel conspiracy theories that Pfizer deliberately waited until after the US elections last week in order to release the positive news. President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., sarcastically tweeted that the timing was “pretty amazing” after the company unveiled the results on Monday, snarking “nothing nefarious about the timing of this at all right?”

With a sizable minority of Americans openly balking at taking a vaccine connected to the Trump administration, Pfizer has attempted to distance itself from the administration’s push to develop a Covid-19 shot, Operation Warp Speed. Pfizer’s head of vaccine research and development Kathrin Jansen claimed on Sunday that “we were never part of the Warp Speed,” denying the company had taken any money from the US government “or from anyone.” But the firm received $1.95 billion from the US government in July, a sizable sum by any estimation and one it’s hard to imagine the company’s executives forgetting about.

Bourla would hardly be the first Big Pharma CEO to cash in on favorable news about a pandemic-ending vaccine. Multiple execs at competitor Moderna dumped a total of $90 million in stock after an announcement of positive results from phase I clinical trials of their own coronavirus vaccine sent share prices soaring 30 percent to an all time high. A closer look at those results dispelled much of the enthusiasm, but not before CFO Lorence Kim and chief medical officer Tal Zaks had cashed in. Moderna’s CEO Stephane Bancel and President Stephen Hoge have also unloaded large amounts of shares, leading some to call for an insider trading investigation. Moderna, too, defended its executives by claiming the stock sales had been prearranged.

Such a probe could come back to bite the head of Operation Warp Speed, former GlaxoSmithKline vaccine chief Moncef Slaoui. A board member of Moderna, Slaoui was forced to offload $10 million in the company’s stock in May after an outcry over the apparent conflict of interest of his overseeing a “vaccine race” with a significant sum of money riding on one competitor.

Many questions remain unanswered about Pfizer’s vaccine ahead of its expected effort to seek emergency FDA approval. The company has not released information about side effects or safety in general, and indeed has not released much information at all beyond its claim that there were fewer symptomatic cases of Covid-19 among clinical trial participants who received the vaccine than in those who received a placebo. Bourla has promised the data will be released “in the coming weeks.”

Meanwhile, 49 percent of Americans have said they probably or definitely will not get the vaccine due to concerns about its being politicized or rolled out without adequate safety trials. If approved, Pfizer's jab would be the first mRNA vaccine ever to hit the market – another factor contributing to popular hesitancy."

Pfizer CEO sells $5.6mn of stock on record surge the day he praised Covid-19 vaccine’s 90% effectiveness, denies insider trading — RT Business News

One wonders how and when this "predetermined agreement" was applicable. Possibly -0.2% of the share price high, on the day the announcement, was the "agreement".

[OhOh]

Oneworld, SkyTeam and Star Alliance support a globally harmonised approach to health testing to build a framework of trust

11 November 2020

"The three global airline alliances, oneworld, SkyTeam and Star Alliance, are in full support of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) second-phase Council on Aviation Recovery Task Force (CART) report released on 10 November. Together, they urge governments to implement the report guidelines for passenger testing protocols, as well as the adoption of digital health pass technology, so air travel may safely resume.

Government-imposed travel and entry restrictions continue to significantly impact global travel demand. Meanwhile, COVID-19 testing has emerged as an important part of an end-to-end solution to enable the safe restart of international travel by potentially reducing the reliance on the blunt instrument of blanket quarantines.

“We welcome the publication of the updated CART report which, among other things, calls for the serious consideration of screening and testing as a means for easing travel and border restrictions, and reviving the travel and tourism industry and the global economy,” said Star Alliance CEO Jeffrey Goh. “A robust protocol for testing will also provide further evidence to demonstrate that air travel is not a material cause for infections and will pave the way for a framework of trust to be established between countries.”

On behalf of their 58 member airlines, representing over 60% of world airline capacity and carrying over 1.87 billion passengers annually prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the three alliances are calling for a harmonised approach to testing that will form the foundation of a trust framework, as recommended by the ICAO guidelines.

SkyTeam CEO Kristin Colvile said: “Testing regimes and trials of digital health passes have identified means to restoring confidence and reopening borders, complementing the layer upon layer of passenger safety measures already implemented by airlines and airports worldwide. Aviation supports millions of jobs around the world and drives international commerce, trade and tourism. Urgent action is needed to adopt testing and technology to mitigate COVID risks and safely and quickly revive international air travel.”

The recent digital ‘health pass’ trials, such as Common Pass, are presenting a strong case for using digital technology to deliver harmonised standards in the validation and verification of accredited passenger health data. The alliances support technical solutions that provide a consistent, scalable and affordable way to declare passenger health data that is simple to implement as part of the customer journey, with processes initiated pre-travel to reduce passenger inconvenience at airports.

oneworld CEO Rob Gurney said: “With extensive travel restrictions creating much uncertainty for customers, testing can play a role in enabling the safe restart of travel. Any solution used in declaring passenger health data should be consistent, scalable and cost effective – this will provide clarity and confidence to customers, airlines and other stakeholders as international travel resumes.”

3 Global Airline Alliances Call For Global Testing Standard | oneworld

Currently the test result undertaken to board a plane is internationally accepted as valid, for approx 3 or 4 days from the date the test is administered.

Having you location compulsorily recorded helps, if a suspect:

was on the flight you traveled - identified possibly two weeks later,

was present at an airport where a suspect traveled through - identified possibly two weeks later,

was identified in an area which you traveled through/stopped for a meal/pee/diesel in - identified possibly two weeks after being in that area, .....

What could possibly go wrong.

One hopes the airlines and app suppliers have a large insurance policy.

One quote from one of the three ICAO reports:

"Globally- and regionally-harmonized, mutually-accepted measures are essential."

The three reports are available here:

Council Aviation Recovery Taskforce (CART)

[HuangLao]

Pandemic profiteers, less for the betterment of the people.
Expected.

[Mandaloopy]

You would have thought that vaccine status of flyers could be added to a biometric passport? It would be a lot less fuss than apps and QR codes

[misskit]

Covid-19 vaccines may have potentially unpleasant side effects

Pfizer is expected to seek federal permission to release its Covid-19 vaccine by the end of November, a move that holds promise for quelling the pandemic but also sets up a tight time frame to make sure consumers understand what it will mean to get the shots.


The vaccine, and likely most others, will require two doses to work, injections that must be given weeks apart, company protocols show. Scientists anticipate that the shots will cause enervating flu-like side effects — including sore arms, muscle aches and fever — that could last days and temporarily sideline some people from work or school. And even if a vaccine proves 90 percent effective, the rate Pfizer touted for its product, 1 in 10 recipients would still be vulnerable. That means, at least in the short term, as population-level immunity grows, people can't stop social distancing and throw away their masks.

MORE Covid-19 vaccines may have potentially unpleasant side effects

[OhOh]

It would be a lot less fuss than apps

The app makes ones mobile GPS traceable, unless of course one swaps to a local sim cards when abroad.

Ones passport not so easy to track.