The COVID-2019 Thread

[bsnub]

Are you under the impression that the USA controls these companies and that whenever they place an order, the company manufactures and distributes said order to them exclusively?

In this case the company came to them and offered the allocation. It would really help if you actually read the fucking articles. When the administration passed up on the doses they were allocated to other countries.

[Klondyke]

They did produce the doses that the previous administration passed up, and they went to other countries instead of the US.

Didn't the production wait what the POTUS (whichever) will tell them? They did not know what to do (for the money received)... Then only they have started...

And what had been produced was sent to other countries instead of the US...
So generous... Didn't the POTUS carve "America First"?

[harrybarracuda]

Why do I get the impression a large chunk of this shit won't be pruned to the DH thread but just binned?

Now, back to the pandemic:

(Reuters) - Pfizer Inc expects to deliver more than 13 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine per week to the United States by the middle of March, more than doubling its shipments from early February, a top Pfizer executive said in prepared testimony ahead of a Tuesday congressional hearing.

Pfizer is on track to deliver 120 million doses of its two-dose regimen by the end of March, said John Young, Pfizer’s chief business officer.

Pfizer is also prepared to provide a total of 300 million shots to the United States by the end of July and has raised global production expectations for 2021 to at least 2 billion doses, he said.

Pfizer to ship 13 million COVID-19 vaccine doses per week to U.S. by mid-March, says executive | Reuters

[Slick]

Now, back to the pandemic:

Thats actually good, and as of now, backs up everything ive been saying before this thread took a shit.

Not to mention the other vaccinations that will come online for FDA Approval, and theres gonna be a huge surplus.

[harrybarracuda]

It is important to get yourself back into the mindset we were all in a year ago. It was a time of mass confusion and there was a mask shortage at hospitals. People were hoarding things and panicking. I think his comments were made in an attempt to stop people from making a run on masks when it was far more important for the hospitals to have them first.

Actually he did admit that later: PPE was in short supply (because the chinkies had bought it all up) and he felt frontline workers should get it.

[harrybarracuda]

All the President’s Lies About the Coronavirus

An unfinished compendium of Trump’s overwhelming dishonesty during a national emergency

All of Trump’s Lies About the Coronavirus - The Atlantic

Slick: 'It's Fauci's fault'

Slick should read it, but he probably won't:

When: Thursday, August 27
The claim: Trump “launched the largest national mobilization since World War II” against COVID-19, and America “developed, from scratch, the largest and most advanced testing system in the world.”

The truth: These claims are incorrect and misleading. The federal government’s coronavirus response has been roundly criticized as a failure because of flawed and delayed testing, entrenched inequality that has amplified the virus’s effects, and chaotic federal leadership that’s left much of the country’s response up to the states to handle. Trump vacillated on fully invoking the Defense Production Act in March, set off international panic when he mistakenly said he was banning all travel from European nations, and was slow to support social-distancing measures nationwide. Widespread use of the DPA was still rare in July, despite continued shortages of medical supplies.

Fuck me there are some belters in there.

The coronavirus is “going to go away without a vaccine … and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.”

No wonder the dumb fucking trumpanzees didn't take it seriously.

[bsnub]

backs up everything ive been saying before this thread took a shit.

It doesn't back up shit as you have been spouting nonsense. America is out 200 million doses because your orange god decided not to place the order back in November, so Biden had to do it in January.

Not to mention the other vaccinations that will come online for FDA Approval, and theres gonna be a huge surplus.

It is fucking captain obvious with that observation. We will be throwing the shit away by the end of the year, but that is beside the point.

[harrybarracuda]

The reason Biden had to order all these things is because the bald orange fuckwit didn't have a clue.

KEY FACTS

Biden directed federal agencies to use “all available legal authorities” to combat supply chain shortages, including invoking the Defense Production Act, which can ramp up production of supplies like personal protective equipment, testing kits and syringes for vaccinations.

He established a pandemic testing board to increase testing capacity and a Covid-19 Health Equity Task Force to fix imbalances in the populations who are getting vaccinated, and directed federal agencies to accelerate the development of new Covid-19 treatments.

An executive order mandates face masks on interstate public transportation like airplanes and trains, as well as in airports, and requires international travelers to provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test to enter the country.

Biden increased state reimbursements for the National Guard and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), including having FEMA reimburse schools for coronavirus-related expenses like cleaning and PPE, and took action to improve how public health data is collected.

Biden issued a national security directive aimed at working with global partners on Covid-19, including the World Health Organization (WHO).

Biden directed the federal education and health departments to establish guidelines for safely reopening schools, and ordered new guidelines around workplace safety and directed federal agencies to “explore mechanisms” to better protect workers from Covid-19.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisond...h=75d36f4c16b3

[bsnub]

The reason Biden had to order all these things is because the bald orange fuckwit didn't have a clue.

Obviously.

[harrybarracuda]

What the UK did in April:

The government took a grip on the process by establishing the vaccines task force (VTF) in April with a budget of billions of pounds to secure supplies of Covid-19 vaccines for the UK from a range of manufacturers using different technologies. At that point it was not clear which would work well — and which could be pushed through clinical development and into people’s arms most quickly.“In our discussion with manufacturers we committed to supporting manufacturing in any case where that would help get us earlier supplies,” said Kate Bingham, who chaired the task force until December.

Subscribe to read | Financial Times


What baldy orange loser did in April... and May... and June... and July... and....

[bsnub]

What baldy orange loser did in April... and May... and June... and July... and....

Exactly. There was no plan and gross incompetance.

[misskit]

Thailand to start first coronavirus vaccinations this week


BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand will start vaccinating priority groups including health workers against COVID-19 by the end of this week, its prime minister said on Tuesday, a day ahead of the arrival of the country’s first coronavirus vaccines.


Thailand will receive the first 200,000 of two million doses of Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac on Wednesday. The Chinese vaccine was given emergency use authorisation on Monday.


“We will start injecting the target groups within three days after the vaccines arrive,” Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said in a Facebook post.


The Sinovac vaccines will be given to priority groups in 13 provinces, the COVID-19 taskforce said. More than half of the 200,000 doses will be earmarked for Samut Sakhon, the epicentre of Thailand’s latest outbreak, and the capital, Bangkok.

Prayuth said 800,000 more doses will arrive in March and the remaining one million in April, some of which will be used for the second inoculations for priority groups.


Prayuth also said that 26 million doses of vaccines on order from AstraZeneca, which has authorised a Thai firm to manufacture its vaccine, will be ready around May to June.


Thailand has also reserved a further 35 million doses from AstraZeneca.

Thailand will also receive 117,000 imported doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Wednesday, health minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters.


Those were part of the 150,000 “early doses” he had previously said AstraZeneca would provide from another Asian country.


Authorities have received some documents from Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen and have been contacted by Moderna and Pfizer, all with a view to registering their COVID-19 vaccines, according to Prayuth.


Thailand is aiming to administer 10 million doses a month from June when its mass vaccination campaign is in full swing.


Thailand to start first coronavirus vaccinations this week | Reuters

[misskit]

Philippines OKs Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use


MANILA, Philippines (Updated 1:12 p.m.) — The country's Food and Drug Administration has granted an Emergency Use Authorization for the coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech, its chief said Monday.


It is the third COVID-19 jab to get the approval needed for rollout in the government's inoculation program after the vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech.

“After a thorough and rigorous review of the currently available published and unpublished data by our regulatory and medical experts, the FDA is granting an Emergency Use Authorization to the COVID-19 vaccine of Sinovac,” FDA Director General Eric Domingo said in a briefing Monday.




The announcement was made just a day before government officials said doses of Sinovac’s vaccine known as CoronaVac were supposed to arrive in the Philippines. Beijing committed to donate 600,000 doses of the Chinese-made coronavirus jab, of which 100,000 will be allocated to military personnel.


Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said Monday that the Chinese Embassy in Manila need three to five days to prepare the vaccine shipment once EUA is issued.

The EUA will be valid only within the duration of the declared public health emergency or upon the issuance of certificate of product registration, which is the typical license issued to products.


Not best vaccine for health workers


The authorization clears CoronaVac for use on “clinically healthy” individuals aged 18 and 59 years after it was found to have an efficacy rate of 65.3% in clinical trials held in Indonesia and 91.25% in the study conducted in Turkey.


But late-stage trials in Brazil had shown an efficacy rate of 50.4%—just above the threshold the World Health Organization uses to decide if a vaccine is worth using. Brazil conducted trials with healthcare workers exposed to COVID-19 patients only.


"The use of Sinovac vaccine on healthcare workers is not recommended," Domingo said, explaining that CoronaVac is not the most ideal vaccine to administer to medical frontliners because of their constant exposure to the virus.


Medical frontliners are at the top of the government's priority list for COVID-19 vaccination. Aside from them, senior citizens, indigent population and uniformed personnel are also among the priority groups.


“The safety profile is good, adverse events were mild to moderate. The possibility of allergy and severe allergy or anaphylaxis is minimal,” the FDA chief said in a mix of English and Filipino.


Unlike competitor vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, Sinovac has yet to submit Phase 3 clinical trial data to medical journals for peer review.


The AstraZeneca shot was found to be 70% effective on average. Meanwhile, COVID-19 jabs from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna reported 95% and 94.1% efficacy rates, respectively.


Sinovac shots can be stored at around 2°C, which is the standard temperature that is within the existing cold chain system in the country.


The Philippine government earlier signed a term sheet with the Chinese drugmaker for 25 million doses of its vaccine.


It is aiming to secure a total of 146 to 148 million vaccine doses to inoculate at least 50 million people this year alone, but it has yet to execute definitive supply agreements with pharmaceutical companies.

Philippines OKs Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use | Philstar.com

[OhOh]

I was the Australian doctor on the WHO's COVID-19 mission to China. Here's what we found about the origins of the coronavirus

By Dominic Dwyer

Posted Yesterday at 12:45pm



"As I write, I am in hotel quarantine in Sydney, after returning from Wuhan, China. There, I was the Australian representative on the international World Health Organization's (WHO) investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.Much has been said of the politics surrounding the mission to investigate the viral origins of COVID-19. So it's easy to forget that behind these investigations are real people.

As part of the mission, we met the man who, on December 8, 2019, was the first confirmed COVID-19 case; he's since recovered.

We met the husband of a doctor who died of COVID-19 and left behind a young child. We met the doctors who worked in the Wuhan hospitals treating those early COVID-19 cases, and learned what happened to them and their colleagues.

We witnessed the impact of COVID-19 on many individuals and communities, affected so early in the pandemic, when we didn't know much about the virus, how it spreads, how to treat COVID-19, or its impacts.

We talked to our Chinese counterparts — scientists, epidemiologists, doctors — over the four weeks the WHO mission was in China.

We were in meetings with them for up to 15 hours a day, so we became colleagues, even friends.
This allowed us to build respect and trust in a way you couldn't necessarily do via Zoom or email.

Animal origins, but not necessarily at the Wuhan markets

It was in Wuhan, in central China, that the virus, now called SARS-CoV-2, emerged in December 2019, unleashing the greatest infectious disease outbreak since the 1918-19 influenza pandemic.

Our investigations concluded the virus was most likely of animal origin. It probably crossed over to humans from bats, via an as-yet-unknown intermediary animal, at an unknown location.

Such "zoonotic" diseases have triggered pandemics before. But we are still working to confirm the exact chain of events that led to the current pandemic.

Sampling of bats in Hubei province and wildlife across China has revealed no SARS-CoV-2 to date.
We visited the now-closed Wuhan wet market which, in the early days of the pandemic, was blamed as the source of the virus. Some stalls at the market sold "domesticated" wildlife products.

These are animals raised for food, such as bamboo rats, civets and ferret badgers. There is also evidence some domesticated wildlife may be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2.

However, none of the animal products sampled after the market's closure tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

We also know not all of those first 174 early COVID-19 cases visited the market, including the man with the earliest onset date, who was diagnosed in December 2019 .

However, when we visited the closed market, it's easy to see how an infection might have spread there. When it was open, there would have been around 10,000 people visiting a day, in close proximity, with poor ventilation and drainage.

There's also genetic evidence generated during the mission for a transmission cluster there. Viral sequences from several of the market cases were identical, suggesting a transmission cluster.

However, there was some diversity in other viral sequences, implying other unknown or unsampled chains of transmission.

A summary of modelling studies of the time to the most recent common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 sequences estimated the start of the pandemic between mid-November and early December.
There are also publications suggesting SARS-CoV-2 circulation in various countries earlier than the first case in Wuhan, although these require confirmation.
The market in Wuhan, in the end, was more of an amplifying event rather than necessarily a true ground zero. So we need to look elsewhere for the viral origins.

Frozen or refrigerated food not ruled out in the spread

Then, there was the "cold chain" hypothesis. This is the idea the virus might have originated from elsewhere via the farming, catching, processing, transporting, refrigeration or freezing of food.

Was that food ice cream, fish, wildlife meat? We don't know. It's unproven that this triggered the origin of the virus itself.

But to what extent did it contribute to its spread? Again, we don't know.
Several "cold chain" products present in the Wuhan market were not tested for the virus. Environmental sampling in the market showed viral surface contamination.
This may indicate the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 through infected people, or contaminated animal products and "cold chain" products.
Investigation of "cold chain" products and virus survival at low temperatures is still underway.

Extremely unlikely the virus escaped from a lab

The most politically sensitive option we looked at was the virus escaping from a laboratory. We concluded this was extremely unlikely.

We visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is an impressive research facility, and looks to be run well, with due regard to staff health.

We spoke to the scientists there. We heard that scientists' blood samples, which are routinely taken and stored, were tested for signs they had been infected. No evidence of antibodies to the coronavirus was found.

We looked at their biosecurity audits. No evidence.

We looked at the closest virus to SARS-CoV-2 they were working on — the virus RaTG13 — which had been detected in caves in southern China where some miners had died seven years previously.
But all the scientists had was a genetic sequence for this virus. They hadn't managed to grow it in culture. While viruses certainly do escape from laboratories, this is rare.
So, we concluded it was extremely unlikely this had happened in Wuhan.

A team of investigators

When I say "we", the mission was a joint exercise between the WHO and the Chinese health commission. In all, there were 17 Chinese and ten international experts, plus seven other experts and support staff from various agencies.
We looked at the clinical epidemiology (how COVID-19 spread among people), the molecular epidemiology (the genetic makeup of the virus and its spread), and the role of animals and the environment.

The clinical epidemiology group alone looked at China's records of 76,000 episodes from more than 200 institutions of anything that could have resembled COVID-19 — such as influenza-like illnesses, pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses.
They found no clear evidence of substantial circulation of COVID-19 in Wuhan during the latter part of 2019 before the first case.

Where to now?

Our mission to China was only phase one. We are due to publish our official report in the coming weeks. Investigators will also look further afield for data, to investigate evidence the virus was circulating in Europe, for instance, earlier in 2019.
Investigators will continue to test wildlife and other animals in the region for signs of the virus. And we'll continue to learn from our experiences to improve how we investigate the next pandemic."

https://www.xxx.xxx.xx/news/2021-02-...covid/13180078

[harrybarracuda]

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand will start vaccinating priority groups including health workers against COVID-19 by the end of this week, its prime minister said on Tuesday, a day ahead of the arrival of the country’s first coronavirus vaccines.

Thailand will receive the first 200,000 of two million doses of Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac on Wednesday. The Chinese vaccine was given emergency use authorisation on Monday.

Poor health workers.

[harrybarracuda]

I was the Australian doctor on the WHO's COVID-19 mission to China. Here's what we found about the origins of the Wuhan virus

FTFY.

[Klondyke]

Warren Buffett Just Sold His Pfizer Stock. Should You?

Sun, 21 February 2021, 18:09
Warren Buffett once said, "If you aren't willing to own a stock for 10 years, don't even think about owning it for 10 minutes." Most of the stocks that Buffett-led Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) buys, it holds for years -- but not all of them. Berkshire opened a position in Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) in the third quarter of 2020.

Warren Buffett Just Sold His Pfizer Stock. Should You?

[harrybarracuda]

So it's all YOUR fault!

Public Health Minister Anutin Chanvirakul said 117,000 doses of the Oxford-developed vaccine will arrive from Italy weeks after they had been expected along with the 200,000 doses from Beijing. PM Prayuth Chan-o-cha, 66, will take the AstraZeneca shot because of new concerns the Chinese vaccine is unsuitable for those over 60. (more like because he doesn't trusty the chinky shit any more than the rest of the world does - Harry)

Anutin said he had kept the Italian load a secret was due to the political drama surrounding the government’s procurement process, which had made the British-Swedish firm hesitant to supply Thailand. Anutin said they would have arrived last month if people hadn’t made so much noise, laying blame on the public for complaining about how manufacturing was awarded to a firm aligned with the palace.

Double Dose: AstraZeneca vaccines land with CoronaVac tomorrow; Thai PM passes on China’s | Coconuts Bangkok

[Slick]

I was the Australian doctor on the WHO's COVID-19 mission to China. Here's what we found about the origins of the coronavirus

I dont doubt that the WHO team used the data they were given and the samples they could take and did their best with it, but the Chinese are notorious liars and manipulators who stonewalled investigators for a long time. They had ages to manipulate data and prep people.

Its hard to really take any of this seriously. Chinese spend almost a year spreading propaganda and lies about potential origins, and they have the same data the WHO team has.

I would like to know what happened, but I doubt we will ever get a satisfactory answer, unless they find the animal group that it originated from.

[Slick]

Public Health Minister Anutin Chanvirakul said 117,000 doses of the Oxford-developed vaccine will arrive from Italy weeks after they had been expected along with the 200,000 doses from Beijing. PM Prayuth Chan-o-cha, 66, will take the AstraZeneca shot because of new concerns the Chinese vaccine is unsuitable for those over 60. (more like because he doesn't trusty the chinky shit any more than the rest of the world does - Harry)

Anutin said he had kept the Italian load a secret was due to the political drama surrounding the government’s procurement process, which had made the British-Swedish firm hesitant to supply Thailand. Anutin said they would have arrived last month if people hadn’t made so much noise, laying blame on the public for complaining about how manufacturing was awarded to a firm aligned with the palace.

Holy shit thats just perfection on all fronts LMAO

[misskit]

Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide

[Klondyke]

Cheap antiparasitic could cut chance of Covid-19 deaths by up to 75%
JANUARY 20 2021

Researchers hail ivermectin findings but say more studies needed on using drug

A cheap, off-patent antiparasitic drug has been shown to have a significant effect in reducing mortality in patients with moderate to severe Covid-19.

Researchers have hailed the preliminary finding as a pivotal step towards broadening the arsenal of drugs used against the disease.

The University of Liverpool’s Andrew Hill and others carried out a meta-analytical breakdown of 18 studies that found that ivermectin was associated with reduced inflammation and a faster elimination of Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

In six of these trials, the risk of death was reduced by 75 per cent in a subset of patients with moderate to severe Covid-19.

The only antiviral with some sort of approval globally to treat Covid-19 is Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, which has shown some benefit in shortening hospital stays but no clear-cut effect on mortality or viral loads, a measure of how much virus circulates in a patient’s blood stream.

Ivermectin is technically not an antiviral, though these results suggest that the drug may enjoy antiviral properties. It is usually used to treat lice and scabies infestations as well as more serious parasites such as river blindness.

Dr Hill said the ivermectin results were encouraging, but further studies were needed to provide global regulators with evidence robust enough to warrant approvals.

“It’s a generic drug used all over the world. It costs 12 cents to make the drug substance. The drug costs $3 in India, $960 in the US,” Dr Hill told the Financial Times.

The drug could make it harder for people to be infected and it could be harder for those with the disease to infect anyone else, the researchers have posited.

“If people testing positive for Covid-19 are treated immediately with a drug which clears the virus quickly, this might make them less infectious,” Dr Hill said. “This ‘treatment as prevention’ strategy works for HIV and should now be tested for Covid-19.”

“The purpose of this report is to forewarn people that this is coming: get prepared, get supplies, get ready to approve it,” Dr Hill said. “We need to be ready.”

Ivermectin is not approved in the UK and is usually imported from France. But researchers were adamant that many of the studies that had been looked at had not been peer-reviewed and that meta-analyses, which look at many studies at once, could be prone to errors.

While the race to find safe and effective vaccines has yielded a number of approved candidates and some countries have begun large-scale vaccination campaigns, the quest for effective treatments for Covid-19 has lagged behind. Researchers have mostly focused on preventing hospitalisation and reducing death rates for those who become critically ill and end up in hospital.

“Vaccination is central to the response to the epidemic,” Dr Hill said. “But this might help reduce infection rates by making people less infectious and it might reduce death rates by treating the viral infection.”

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

[misskit]

^ Hope that works out. Ivermectin is everywhere and easy to get.

[taxexile]

Ivermectin is everywhere and easy to get.

not in the land of the free it aint.

It costs 12 cents to make the drug substance. The drug costs $3 in India, $960 in the US,” Dr Hill told the Financial Times.

[misskit]

^ For people. It’s cheap for veterinarians.

Even cheap for peoples. Access to this page has been denied.

IVERMECTIN is an anti-infective. It is used to treat infections of some parasites. The lowest GoodRx price for the most common version of ivermectin is around $17.02, 83% off the average retail price of $103.60.