Cont: The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread pt. 2

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Babbylonian said:
If only there were other, safer, more accurate ways to test vaccine efficacy. Oh yeah, there are.
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Sure there are. And they usually take years. The argument is that during an unprecedented global emergency, the standard practices might not be enough.
 
The National Institutes of Health suggested testing Covid-19 vaccines on people who would volunteer to be infected:
Controlled human challenge trials of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates could accelerate the testing and potential rollout of efficacious vaccines.
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Maybe Texas Lt. Gov. Dan 'There's more important things than living' Patrick would be the first to volunteer. Put his money where his mouth is.

How about it, Big Dan? ;)
 
Bob001 said:
Sure there are. And they usually take years. The argument is that during an unprecedented global emergency, the standard practices might not be enough.
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It doesn't take years to determine if a vaccine provoked the correct antibody response. Also, doctors in the specialty indicated that a vaccine could be ready next year. There was no indication that they'd have to use extraordinary measures to do so.

ETA: It's less a global emergency at this point than a US emergency, one that could still be managed with strict lockdowns.
 
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Babbylonian said:
It doesn't take years to determine if a vaccine provoked the correct antibody response. Also, doctors in the specialty indicated that a vaccine could be ready next year. There was no indication that they'd have to use extraordinary measures to do so.

ETA: It's less a global emergency at this point than a US emergency, one that could still be managed with strict lockdowns.
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You're right, it takes years to determine whether there are long term health problems relating to a vaccine. No point vaccinating people if 5 years down the line a significant proportion develop life limiting conditions as a result.
 
The Don said:
You're right, it takes years to determine whether there are long term health problems relating to a vaccine. No point vaccinating people if 5 years down the line a significant proportion develop life limiting conditions as a result.
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You are wrong, there is a point. Can you guess what it is?

U.S. To Get 100 Million Doses of Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine In $1.95 Billion Deal
"If the ongoing studies are successful, Pfizer and BioNTech expect to be ready to seek Emergency Use Authorization or some form of regulatory approval as early as October 2020," the company said in a statement.
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The Don said:
:o

You're right, I forgot Money > People :mad:

...and a miracle vaccine announced a couple of weeks before the election is exactly what President Trump needs. Who cares whether it's safe in the long term.
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Who cares whether it's true. It's the announcement of it that's important. Much like the proposed Biden-Ukraine announcement.
 
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The Don said:
You're right, it takes years to determine whether there are long term health problems relating to a vaccine. No point vaccinating people if 5 years down the line a significant proportion develop life limiting conditions as a result.
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How often has that happened? Ever? And how many people will die or be permanently impaired if a covid vaccine is delayed "five years down the line?"
 
Ladewig said:
I couldn’t get past the paywall.
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Different link here. Actually seems pretty trivial, all things considered. Keeping staff healthy really is a kind of maintenance.
A new report reveals that the Republican National Committee in June attempted to hide thousands of dollars in mask purchases by labeling the expense “building maintenance.”

According to Business Insider, “[W]hen the Republican National Committee in June spent more than $14,000 on ‘building maintenance,’ none of its facilities were getting a face-lift.”
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https://www.politicususa.com/2020/0...abeling-the-expense-building-maintenance.html
 
A promising vaccine is not just an American development. Researchers in the UK are making good progress as well. Last Monday Associate Press reported:
Scientists at Oxford University say their experimental coronavirus vaccine has been shown in an early trial to prompt a protective immune response in hundreds of people who got the shot. British researchers first began testing the vaccine in April in about 1,000 people, half of whom got the experimental vaccine. Such early trials are designed to evaluate safety and see what kind of immune response was provoked, but can’t tell if the vaccine truly protects.

In research published Monday in the journal Lancet, scientists said that they found their experimental COVID-19 vaccine produced a dual immune response in people aged 18 to 55 that lasted at least two months after they were immunized. “We are seeing good immune response in almost everybody,” said Dr. Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University. “What this vaccine does particularly well is trigger both arms of the immune system,” he said. Associated Press
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Bob001 said:
How often has that happened? Ever? And how many people will die or be permanently impaired if a covid vaccine is delayed "five years down the line?"
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https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html

There hasn't really been a vaccine-related disaster because there's been enough drug-related disasters that "what's the worst that could happen?" was already a highly discouraged question.

The bigger question is efficacy: vaccines that just don't work, but end up increasing the spread because people think they're protected so they don't take precautions.

Bob001 said:
Different link here. Actually seems pretty trivial, all things considered. Keeping staff healthy really is a kind of maintenance.
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I think the story is the political implications of having to launder their own funds for PPE. Typically in grift you see unnecessary purchases disguised as critical ones, not the other way around.
 
Aridas said:
Mmm... Honestly, I wouldn't call that suspicious at all. Most cases, especially for healthy women of her age group, aren't serious at all, and it's been notably more than the supposedly up to 10 days of infectiousness after symptom onset.
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No, they lied about the positive test.
These are enemies of western democracy. They will say anything to destroy our Constitution
 
Bob001 said:
Different link here. Actually seems pretty trivial, all things considered. Keeping staff healthy really is a kind of maintenance.

https://www.politicususa.com/2020/0...abeling-the-expense-building-maintenance.html
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Also, playing devil's advocate here, I wonder if they "labelled" it, or if the disclosure form only has a certain number of categories, and "building maintenance" covers all activities of the "facilities" group, which includes cleaning, restocking supplies in the bathrooms or kitchen area, etc. Suddenly, in March, providing visitor and/or employee face masks and hand sanitizer stations got added to the "maintenance" activities.

Even as a hypocrisy/inconsistency story, it's kind of weak. The narrative is that Trump was saying "masks or optional and not all that important", and the RNC was buying masks. The thing is, the RNC runs an office building. In Michigan, one of the conditions required to reopen an office building these days is that you have to make sure that everyone in the building has masks. I'm sure that some other states have similar laws. So, it's possible that this expenditure was just something tacked on to the building "facilities/maintenance/cleaning" budget in order to comply with local laws.

If there is something nefarious about it, I would hope it gets shouted from the rooftops, but I doubt it's that big of a deal.
 
An aside.

I watched Netflix' "Mars" series.

It's not bad. It follows efforts to colonize Mars in a hypothetical 2033, and intersperses the science fiction plotline with present day documentary style discussion. I wouldn't call it great television, but if you like that sort of thing, it's decent.

Anyway, spoiler alert, one of the plotlines involves a disease outbreak among the colonists. And then it cuts to documentary content that focuses on how governments encountering disease outbreaks often seek to minimize, conceal, or dismiss the danger of the outbreaks because they are afraid of the economic damage it could cause.

And it was filmed pre-Covid, but watching it was almost eerie in the current circumstances.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html

There hasn't really been a vaccine-related disaster because there's been enough drug-related disasters that "what's the worst that could happen?" was already a highly discouraged question.

The bigger question is efficacy: vaccines that just don't work, but end up increasing the spread because people think they're protected so they don't take precautions.
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If you expand all those links, you find one incident where a vaccine was actually determined to cause problems in infants and withdrawn from the market, one where a European vaccine that was never licensed in the U.S. caused problems, and a couple cases where contamination -- including by broken glass -- caused problems. The other investigations determined that allegations of ill effects were not supported. I have enough confidence in the process that I'll get a covid vaccine the first day I can.

Most vaccines are not 100% reliable, but I doubt people change their behavior after getting a shot. Flu vaccines provide notoriously variable protection, but I don't see people who have been vaccinated behaving differently from people who haven't.

We can't wear masks and sit inside forever. If the U.S. had responded like Germany or Japan, we would already be past the worst. But now here we are. A partially effective vaccine has to be better than no vaccine.
 
newyorkguy said:
The National Institutes of Health suggested testing Covid-19 vaccines on people who would volunteer to be infected:


Maybe Texas Lt. Gov. Dan 'There's more important things than living' Patrick would be the first to volunteer. Put his money where his mouth is.

How about it, Big Dan? ;)
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DeSantis as well.
 
Bob001 said:
If you expand all those links, you find one incident where a vaccine was actually determined to cause problems in infants and withdrawn from the market, one where a European vaccine that was never licensed in the U.S. caused problems, and a couple cases where contamination -- including by broken glass -- caused problems. The other investigations determined that allegations of ill effects were not supported. I have enough confidence in the process that I'll get a covid vaccine the first day I can.

Most vaccines are not 100% reliable, but I doubt people change their behavior after getting a shot. Flu vaccines provide notoriously variable protection, but I don't see people who have been vaccinated behaving differently from people who haven't.

We can't wear masks and sit inside forever. If the U.S. had responded like Germany or Japan, we would already be past the worst. But now here we are. A partially effective vaccine has to be better than no vaccine.
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A good post, my suggestion to change is to say that there are NO 100% safe and effective vaccines. All vaccines produce a response from the immune system. The trick is to minimise those effects so that the patient isn't inconvienienced and doesn't suffer suffer any significant effects.
 
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