Virus/Vaccine News

Good news, but no chickens can be counted just yet. Apparently “some reports have indicated this particular vaccine requires storage at -80 centigrade, needing specialist storage and distribution”.

Prof Gary McLean, Professor in Molecular Immunology, London Metropolitan University, said: “The vaccine is still some way off yet and will not immediately replace the established control measures currently in place. What must be remembered is that rolling out such a vaccine to the general population will be done in stages, with the most vulnerable and front-line responders first in line. Such a roll out also depends on how many doses of vaccine can be manufactured and storage conditions – two doses are required and cold-chain must be observed. This will take time and effort so will likely be well into 2021 before we see general availability.”

From - https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-pfizer-and-biontech-reporting-interim-results-from-phase-3-covid-19-vaccine-trial/

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Some bod from W.H.O. I think, said they had no trouble with the Ebola vaccine storing it at similar temperatures and that was in hot countries. :+1:
We have to have something to cheer :grinning:

That’s good. I believe some of the other vaccines being developed are not so temp sensitive. All good news, I’m already cheering Biden’s win, and we can cheer about a vaccine soon I hope!

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As with a lot of these press releases it is not going to be available next week.

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What’s a few weeks or months, after what we’ve had to put up with, at least its heading in the right direction :+1:

Yes, health wise my priority has been to stay alive until a vaccine comes along. Nice to see progress.

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So Pfizer has a vaccine almost ready and they claim ‘90% effectiveness with very few if any side effects’ (the connection newspaper 12th. November).
I wonder then why the Uk government is seeking tenders for software to ’ process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs) ’
(https://archive.is/2JXqO#selection-961.72-961.155)
I thank my friend for sending me this information reported by UK Column News yesterday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDUIS2kUCbA)

  • although he did tell me that sharing it could get me banned from some forums.
    Not SFN though, I am sure of that.

It’ll probably go to one of Dom’s mates of course.

But it’s not totally unreasonable - the vaccine has had only a small amount of safety testing as these things go and it is a novel technique.

But, more imprtantly, if you dole out 20 million doses of a vaccine you will get a few genuine reactions - which certainly do need to be documented and an absolute flood of reports of problems which are pure coincidences providing much chaff to sift through - which might be why they are asking for an “AI” solution, equally that could just be because Dom’s mate happens to have a half built “AI” soution and the question is being tweaked to get the answer you wanted in the first place.

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That is really tasteless - have a :+1:

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at least it’s better than a :fu: Paul :upside_down_face: :rofl:

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OMG!! What a dreadful bunch. I couldn’t cope with more than a tiny bit as completely populated by conspiracy theorists and people who are well out of their tree.

I am concerned about the speed that this vaccine is being rushed into production, and it sounds as if people in the MHRA are too so entirely prudent to make sure they have capacity to identify issues as quickly as possible. Adverse drug reactions happen and on an individual level can be a tragedy, but usually pretty insignificant at a population level.

yes Jane that was my first thought too, until when I mentioned that to my friend who alerted me to the news release, he pointed out that UK Column News was the only news outlet which revealed that alarming tender announcement. Very strange don’t you think, that such an important admission by the UK government that they expect high levels of adverse reactions from the covid vaccine should be ignored by all the so called mainstream media.
He told me that I should try to put aside my inbuilt bias and look far & wide for my information and that what was once assumed to be a conspiracy has often turned out to be true.
Do you think he may have a point?

that’s it then Geoff. Thanks for that - no need to look more widely then for information, I’ll stick to the bbc and the guardian from now on, after all, we know they always tell the truth - and it makes my life so much easier when I don’t have to make the effort to search for and decide for myself where the truth actually lies.
I am a little surprised though that neither of these established news outlets have mentioned that very inportant piece of news about the tender. Perhaps they don’t want to worry us.

It was reported in the Financial Times
mainstream enough?

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Interesting Geoff. Based on past performance the “software” will probably end up as only a spreadsheet or else be ready for roll out in 2026.
I note the only award criterium is price. Always a stupid idea for something you actually want to work. I would have thought “Tory crony” would be more accurate.

I don’t see what artificial insĂ©mination has to do with this. That’s what it must be because knocking out a state of the art artificial intelligence application for one and half million quid sounds a bit unrealistic. Machine learning on that cheap.