Welcome to the Era of the Anti-Virals. They’re everywhere.
A legacy of the coronavirus pandemic is the dawn of new ways to stop viruses. Here’s another new (old) one — it’s only a small trial, but if it can stop 4 out of 5 people developing the severe form of the disease it will be a gamechanger. If this gets similar numbers on larger trials, then we still need mass production. But national policies will swing on a dime if a safe drug with this much potential appears.
After Coronavirus we might not be so content to accept the annual seasonal virus scourge.
Postenote: These are preliminary results, not a large trial, but at least it is placebo controlled and randomized.
Breakthrough’ treatment slashes virus death risk: study
by Patrick Galey, MedicalXpress
In a randomised trial of 100 patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19, those who received an inhaled formula of the protein interferon beta were at 79 percent lower risk of developing severe disease compared to those who received a placebo.
They were also more than twice as likely to make a full recovery compared with the control group.
The firm behind the treatment, known as SNG001, said the preliminary results suggested “a major breakthrough” in the pandemic.
Interferon beta is a natural cytokine — our bodies produce it during infections, and some think that older people are just not producing enough of it. We may be just replacing something that was meant to be there, or indeed we might be replacing something that the virus has suppressed.
Interferon beta is a naturally occurring protein, which orchestrates the body’s antiviral responses. There is evidence that deficiency in IFN-beta production by the lung could explain the enhanced susceptibility of these at-risk patient groups to developing severe lower respiratory tract (lung) disease during respiratory viral infections. Furthermore, viruses, including coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV, have evolved mechanisms which suppress endogenous IFN-beta production, thereby helping the virus evade the innate immune system.
The current market for Interferon beta is already $5 billion a year. At the moment the cost is reportedly about $7,000 USD per 30 mcg vial. (Not that I can tell you what size the normal dose is).
AIDS wasn’t solved by a vaccine, but by three anti-virals. Unlike AIDS, coronavirus patients won’t need to take the medicine for years. Thankfully RNA viruses don’t insert themselves into our genes the way retroviruses like AIDS do.
It’s possible viruses may find a way to adapt and grow resistant to individual antivirals which is why AIDS patients take the triple cocktail.
REFERENCES
A Randomised Double-blind Placebo-controlled Trial to Determine the Safety and Efficacy of Inhaled SNG001 (IFN-β1a for Nebulisation) for the Treatment of Patients With Confirmed SARS-CoV-2 Infection, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04385095
Hope this works as claimed
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I’m pretty sure the pandemic will be over by Xmas.
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Elon Musk said April (this year)
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The Spanish flu outbreak took a couple of years to quell, so with modern medical science we should expect an earlier breakthrough with this pandemic. Covid-19 is not influenza and may behave differently, but I’m confident human ingenuity will outwit the virus.
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The Spanish flu outbreak took a couple of years to quell, so with modern medical science we should expect an earlier breakthrough with this pandemic. Covid-19 is not influenza and may behave differently, but I’m confident human ingenuity will outwit the virus.
Don’t bet on it Gordo, the Spanish flu had explosive growth thus peaked and burned out quick via a lack of effective control, then sudden onsets of quarantine to quench it, but after the horse had already bolted and killed millions. Thus it typically overwhelmed countries repeatedly, and apparently very easily, until it could not any longer.
COVID-19 had very fast growth rates initially in mid-May of up to 35% to 45% per day, reported for some countries, but that was slashed within ten days, as information flowed freely to those populations.
The global average daily growth today is only 3.8%, so there’s little to no explosive spreading (up to 17% growth in some counties on Friday), so it will take years to progress through a very much larger global population holding it back, and this is dramatically reducing the daily deaths.
Slowing it means we also created the room to make it ineffective via time to ramp antivirals, as we don’t (and won’t) have to let it run its course this time, or react too late to slow it to 1/10th, to 1/15th, of the speed that it can spread at. Plus a more deadly strain can still emerge that runs amok if we don’t continue to hold it down until we have widely available antiviral treatments.
We’ll beat it, for sure, the question is, how much of humanity beats it though? And how much won’t beat it and thus suffers a much more damaging and disruptive spread for longer? The answer is here: Highest Active Cases Today:
USA … 1,968,166
Brazil … 632,192
India … 402,116
Russia … 211,457
South Africa … 173,590
Colombia … 101,272
Peru … 99,216
Bangladesh … 91,229
Mexico … 87,617
Argentina … 72,488
Those are the countries most likely to suffer terrible damage and disruption if widely available antivirals don’t pull them through. But the bigger their case load the longer it will take to produce enough doses … the more cases they will get … etc.
BTW, China is #127 on this same list, apparently they thought about it and decided it was a really bad list to be on, so no holds were barred in getting off it, ASAP.
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I still think the Case Fatality Rate is a better marker than the overall numbers, and in Case Fatality rates, number one ranking goes to France, followed by Belgium, Italy, UK, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Canada ,Ecuador , and Ireland. None of these countries used Hydroxychloroquine early in the disease. The countries that used hydroxychloroquine routinely, in all covid positive cases (prior to Lancetgate),had much lower CFRs. Unfortunately, many stopped their HCQ treatments when the WHO stopped all its studies. Check out their numbers, and look at the spikes in almost every case after that two week period. The WHO are very bad for your health. These early HCQ users include South Korea, Bahrain, Israel, India, Russia,Turkey,Pakistan,Egypt,Quatat,Oman,Malaysia UAE,Ukraine,Belarus etc etc etc Meanwhile, we try to isolate in our South Pacific Bubble. If that fails, could we move to Antarctica? Oh, that is out of the question as we have decommissioned the only ice breaker that can resupply Mawson Base!
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After, or before, el nino kicks in?
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La Nina should also be happening around Xmas.
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Good news if it works.
It has a better chance of being accepted by the establishment because 1) Trump didn’t mention it and 2) it’s super expensive.
Plus it seems it’s not for prophylaxis or early stage infection and you have to be sick enough to be admitted to hospital to use it.
Everything that is scientifically and ethically justifiable should be tried but still no one is prepared to properly trial the simple, cheap and safe treatment for early stage infection of Zelenko. All I am asking for is a proper clinical trial according to his protocol but it’s just not happening because “orange man bad”. Nothing to do with science.
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Two new studies from the USA, (Henry Ford Centre and another one),both show almost 50% decrease in death rate if Hydroxychloroquine given at diagnosis, (not on Day 7 like the Oxford study}, but we cannot seem to get past the “Trump recommends dangerously bad drug ” meme. I am not waiting for a “properly controlled” double blind trial. Got my stash in the bathroom cupboard, as am over 65 and have co morbidities. Retired, but went back to work in GP land as nowhere to go…The only way we will ever get a double blind trial on Hydroxychloroquine is if it is run by Gilead and its Dem backers.. More info on MEDICINE UNCENSORED. It is, to quote an old meme, A Mad,Mad, Mad ,old world.
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Sorry, the new studies were the Henry Ford Center Study, from Michegan, and the bigger Mt Sinai Study, from New York-look em up! And the WHO , which stopped its HCQ trials two days after the Lancetgate study, has refused to recommence those trials, in spite of the Lancet studies being withdrawn after being found to be totally fraudulent. The WHO, (or the China Health Organisation, as the Japanese Minister for Health recently tagged it) is very bad for World Health
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And HCQ is just a little bit cheaper than B Interferon, which is $7000 dollars a dose!. Meanwhile the mean age of death from covid in the USA is……78 . Worse than I would have thought, as my guess was 82.
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Can we believe any data coming from the US as there are so many documented cases of mis-counting of trials and death attribution? The only data worth inspecting seems to be total deaths current year vs past average.
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Jo, can you explain this in more detail. Maybe some references for a better understanding
[Apologies Steve the auto filter is holding up your comments for some reason.]AD
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Sorry, I meant this particular line…
“Thankfully RNA viruses don’t insert themselves into our genes the way retroviruses like AIDS do.”
I am not aware of this fact.
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Maybe because genes are DNA; never the twain…
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HIV DNA Integration
Abstract
Retroviruses are distinguished from other viruses by two characteristic steps in the viral replication cycle. The first is reverse transcription, which results in the production of a double-stranded DNA copy of the viral RNA genome, and the second is integration, which results in covalent attachment of the DNA copy to host cell DNA.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3385939/
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Regarding HIV; background reading —
https://www.healthline.com/health/hiv-aids/vaccine-how-close-are-we#obstacles
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I do not believe that I have yet seen an explanation of why babies, children and young people seem so little affected (or even infected) by this virus.
Like many of us with grandchildren it was my major worry. (And now our granddaughter has been given her first proper bike – will the worry never end?)
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Mikwaite, the recent research into the T-cell component of or immune response may also offer some answers there. But it’s really complicated stuff. Not the explanation you can do here in a blog contribution concisely. But, roughly, as we get older our ability to product a wide variety of T cells diminishes. In younger bodies there is still mostly present that broad range of T -cell diversity which allows “younger” people to generally only experience mild COVID symptoms. (always exceptions). For the common flu that response is different in younger people who can (in general) have worse reactions to that virus compared with COVID-19. The T-cell theory is somewhat controversial , mainly because its part of what you can describe as herd immunity. But, the whole “lets fight COVID” subject is very fluid. At times I am amazed at how much we already knew about Coronaviruses virology/epidemiology but then at other times I am also amazed at how little is known about the basic science and its implementation in the health response to COVID. ( a big IMO comment of course – :-)) Can I say Jo is doing a brilliant job at shining a light at all aspects of COVID science.
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[Duplicate]AD
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I don’t believe anyone has a definitive answer but I speculate it could be partly related to the fact that children are less likely to be vitamin D deficient than older people due to 1) spending more time in the sun playing and 2) vitamin D production declines with age.
See comments by William at #6 below concerning vitamin D.
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Young children are less Vitamin D deficient than adults because they have organized daily pay time outdoors between 10am and 3pm when they go to school. Between 10am and 3pm are the only hours when there is sufficient UVB to enable our bodies to make Vitamin D. Young children also consume more calories per day and hence can absorb more of the small amount of Vitamin D that is found in some foods (meats, particularly fish and Vitamin D in the US is added to milk, 100 UI/cup).
Vitamin D should not be called a Vitamin because it is almost impossible to get sufficient Vitamin D from our diet and because active Vitamin D turns on genes that changes our body at cellular level in a dosage proportional manner. Active Vitamin D is an essential chemical that our body needs.
The reason why we cannot make the amount of active Vitamin D 25(OH)D for our bodies to function optimally, is because of skin cancer concerns and because people work inside during the day… we do not get enough UVB and in some countries it is not possible to get enough sunlight to get a blood serum level of 150 ml/L 60 ng/ml, US units during the winter, regardless of time spent outdoors.
This is true in every country, even sunny Australia which is odd. In raining UK, it does not seem possible that the Vitamin D problem has gone unaddressed (the solution is not difficult) for so long. There are breastfeeding dark skin mothers, in a UK study, who had active Vitamin D levels of 22 ml/L or 9 ng/ml US units which is the same low level found in nursing homes which is weird. Obviously, the Vitamin D deficient is why the elderly people, are in the nursing home. Vitamin D deficiency is linked to dementia and to balance problems and so on. Vitamin D deficiency is also linked with obesity, depression, and on.
82% of the US black population have active Vitamin D blood serum levels of less than 50 ml/L or 20 ng/ml.
Optimum active Vitamin D blood serum level is greater than 150 ml/L 60 ng/ml US units based on the women’s breast cancer data. 42% of the general US population has active Vitamin D levels less than 50 ml/L or 20 ng/ml US units as compared to 36% of the AU population in the AU winter who have active Vitamin D levels that are less than 50 ml/L or 20 ng/ml.
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I’ve posted, before, something much like the following, so sorry if you find it an echo:
We live at 47° North Latitude (cold winter, sunny summer) so when outside tend to cover up, including hat and gloves. Regular medical exams, now called ‘Wellness Visits’, while covered by insurance, do not include laboratory and other tests. That includes a test of Vitamin D level. Why is a mystery.
They do ask that you draw the hands of a clock showing 10 minutes to 10, or sum such; remember 3 works for about 5 minutes, and get a temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. For these things, I don’t need a medical professional.
I can’t do a Vitamin D test, and they could. Seems odd.
Anyway, I now take 2,400 units of D3 and 11mg of Zink; plus the other stuff in a multi-vitamin and mineral pill. That pill tastes terrible so I coat it in bacon grease. Yum!
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sorry for the duplication – fingers all a tremble
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You couldn’t have done it as the system would have blocked it as a duplicate post – it’s a bug that just randomly occurs
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$7000 per treatment is not going to compete with the Artificial Covid antibody treatment which has gone to phase 3 studies.
Also it would seem, as it is known that the cohort of covid patients who are deficient in Vitamin D are 10 times more likely to die of covid and 19 times more likely to have serious covid symptoms… that correcting the patient’s vitamin D deficient would enable their body to produce more Interferon Beta, which would explain the correlation of Vitamin D deficiency with covid death. $0.13/day for 5000 UI/day. $8 for a bottle of 60 capsules, 5000 UI/capsule in the US.
Regeneron is looking at a cost of $200 to $600 per treatment, for their artificial optimized antibody. This is a breakthrough in cheaper medicines because of the technology.
There are three companies that are working with the US military to develop optimized artificial antibodies for covid. All three companies have had very good success, for their phase 1 and phase 2 trails, which is good news for that technology.
This is the same technology that was used to stop Ebola.
The patient is treated with a single injection of the optimized antibody. The patient is essentially virus free in 48 hours.
This is treatment is not a vaccine. The antibody is expected to provide the patient with roughly 4 weeks of protection against covid.
https://investor.regeneron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/regeneron-announces-start-regn-cov2-phase-3-covid-19-prevention
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/health/regeneron-coronavirus-antibody-drug-bn/index.html
Regeneron starts Phase 3 trial of Covid antibody drug
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15225843/
Associations with Vitamin D deficiency in “at risk” Australians
https://www.health.gov.au/resources/pregnancy-care-guidelines/part-g-targeted-maternal-health-tests/vitamin-d-status
47.1.1 Vitamin D status in Australia
The Australian Health Survey 2011–12 (ABS 2014b) found that most Australian adults had Vitamin D levels above 50 nmol/L (20 ng/ml), with 23% having lower levels. Prevalence of vitamin D levels lower than 50 nmol/L was:
• lower in summer (14%) and higher in winter (36%)
https://emerginnova.com/patterns-of-covid19-mortality-and-vitamin-d-an-indonesian-study/
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Related but important.
This MedCram video is about using a cheap daily test for C-19 which could be a more effective strategy for infection control than the current testing regime.
The test is less sensitive than lab tests (hence previous criticism) but it is argued and demonstrated that that is not a problem.
The test is available right now (in the US). Manufacturer website at https://www.abbott.com/IDNOW.html
Video (not from manufacturer) at
https://youtu.be/h7Sv_pS8MgQ
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David, that is not new news here in the US. My sister is a nurse in one of the most heavily infected areas in NJ.
They offered the abbott test free for any employee of the hospital to take. They all refused the Abbott test because from their experience, they don’t trust the results. Maybe the test has changes or been updated since May…haven’t followed it.
From being overwhelmed in April, they may be looking at layoffs as covid cases ares very low, but the elective surgery patients are afraid to go to a hospital, as bizarre as that seems.
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Thanks David.
That was a very informative video. Well worth the 17min time investment. If you only can spare 7min then I suggest watching the first 7 min which explains the issue very well.
Please FDA roll out the Abbott ID test (or similar). The test is cheap and rapid, both very important.
They some things about infectivity as a function of viral load which confirms what I had been thinking based on the few cases that I have read about and that is that people are not infectious until very close to the onset of symptoms. That also helps a lot.
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Agree – thanks David. A very informative video. So, a cheap test that everybody could do daily at home that would detect whether or not you are a risk to others. If it has been around for a while, why couldn’t everybody have had access to it?
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In the US the machine has been around for awhile, scattered across the country in different medical centers running a variety of tests. Dr Birx from the task force tried to locate them across the US and have them moved to the first hot spots (New York).For some reason, locating them was not easy….oddly enough, Abbott didn’t have an easy wsy of locating who had the machines so a plea went out through the news media. Ehen finally some where rounded up, the new problem was Abbott ramping up Production of the particular covid test the machine required. That was problematic because there was a shortage of several critical reagents needed to produce the tests. Seems a good portion of them were sourced in china, where many countries were seeking these reagents for their own use.
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Also related IMO
“Place your trust in science: The current CDC nucleic acid test kits for SARS-CoV-2 generate 30% false-positive and 20% false-negative results in the best state public health laboratory, Dr. Sin Hang Lee reported in a peer-reviewed article published in the International Journal of Geriatrics and Rehabilitation, an online journal based in Japan
Lots more at the link.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/07/20/wuhan-flu-53/
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There are a number of more positive recent news reports, interferon is one, the apparent encouraging reports of the British vaccine trials another but one issue I find depressing and that is the issue of reaction to face masks. We are in the middle of a pandemic, if you catch covid it could kill you – OK not likely but comparable to dying or serious injury in a car accident. So some people think face masks reduce the risk while others think they are largely useless; and that is a reason to oppose them????? Why do all hospital staff wear them and indeed demand them if they are so useless? What is the down side to wearing a mask pray tell? Is the opposition politically based or simply because of perceived inconvenience? Is it cost; one can make reusable cloth masks for a pittance- a few dollars and that is more important than devastating our society economically? I don’t like the precautionary principle in general because it is so often used incorrectly but in this case, the benefit may be uncertain but possibly significant but what is the down side? Think of them like seat belts in cars. Seat belts do have a down side, they can injure you-especially women- but they can also save your life.
I have heard the argument that if you touch the front of the mask and then your face you could actually transfer the virus to yourself from the mask. REALLY!! Think of it this way, any virus particles that end up on the mask got there either because they drifted onto the mask or more likely because they were in the air drawn through the mask as you breathe. In either case, without the mask those same virus particles would have ended up on your face or more likely in your lungs. This is a better outcome than the risk of transferring some of the particles to your face by touching the face of the mask??
Personally I am delighted that we belatedly are mandating masks in Victoria while at the same time furious that the government opposed such a simple even if uncertain benefit for so long.
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I entirely agree with you Michael.
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Why do the religious worship? Because they believe it to be effective.
Why do the non-religious worship? Because it is easier to conform.
Well (in common with nearly all the local geriatrics), I usually don’t wear one, but I carry one in case I encounter someone who requests me to wear one, or I think it polite to assume that they would rather I wore one.
I do, however, use an effective hand sanitizer on entering and leaving the store, and wet wipes as I proceed from purchase to purchase. They are definitely effective – not imported from, shush you know who.
Up until now, our local (Co-op) groceries store mandated only 5 customers at a time and distancing. None of the staff, regardless of age, wore masks. Screens at the checkout, staff hand sanitizers and staff distancing only.
The government has now mandated masks in stores from next Friday, so, I shall be masked. I would prefer a functioning Darth Vader outfit, though.
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“……..but it gave action-man Daniel Andrews headlines and something to say at a press conference…………”
Get the picture?
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/07/but-it-gave-action-man-daniel-andrews-something-to-say.html
https://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/131937-here-i-go-thinking-again-dale/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-1450922
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Somewhat related, Medcram has an interesting video supporting the lower sensitivity but rapid virus testing kits (could be done at home, easily):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Sv_pS8MgQ
There are misleading statistics about test sensitivity. The RT-PCR tests are more sensitive, but also pick up the virus at a threshold below that where a patient is shedding a transmissible load. The much cheaper ($1-2 per test) 10min lower sensitivity tests will still pick up cases, but only at higher viral loads, closer to the transmissible levels. These lower sensitivity tests are far more practical, therefore, for daily monitoring and decision making. The high sensitivity tests often take a week or more to be completed (probably due to backlogs).
If someone has very low viral loads and shrugs off the disease (younger people, for example) there isn’t a lot of point in finding those cases with expensive, slow, but sensitive RT-PCR tests. Better to monitor people daily or a couple times a week, and have them isolate if the cheap, quick tests spot a high load case.
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I should add, if we are seeing unnecessary ‘over-reporting’ of cases because we are picking up a lot of low load, non-transmissible cases, then we are unduly slamming the brakes on economies where a cheaper, faster monitoring system & associated case-by-case isolation would be a far more effective strategy.
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In better news the Oxford university trial, using a modified form of a Monkey specific flu virus, has successfully passed its stage 1 trial. However, it may be hard to get, as Britain has pre purchased 100 million doses, along with just about any other treatement.
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Perhaps those early predictions of a vaccine within 1 year will turn out to be correct. Let’s hope so.
But it’s still early days and many obstacles to be overcome.
GeoffW
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There is a new technology in vaccines…. Some have said this new technology has been held back. The delivery package has the potential, to be cheap to manufacture and make it possible for very high mass production. The package could also enable vaccine design/changes to be more predictable and much faster.
The traditional vaccine is a dead/weaken form of the virus.
This new technology uses a virus like entity to get the body’s own cells to create a protein which will cause the body to produce an immune response.
The created protein can be precisely designed and changed, to enable it, to get an optimum human immune response.
The best traditional vaccines had an effective rate of 60%, if they are current with the strain of the virus they protect against. If they are not current, the effectiveness has for previously used vaccines dropped to close to 30% and many people will have close to that protection, with no vaccine.
Moderna, the company who was first to complete their Phase I test, is one of the companies using their technology to produce a custom protein to invoke a covid immunity. They had a perfect phase 1 test.
Moderna have joined a team that is being led by one of the major pharmaceutical companies to mass produce their new delivery package. This team has received a $500 million hurry up loan from the US.
The team’s objective is be able to manufacture the ‘vaccine’ package to produce 500 million doses per year, starting in late fall of this year, increasing to 1 billion doses a year, in 2021.
This is a link to the report of their phase 1 study.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483
Moderna Phase 1 results show coronavirus vaccine safe
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/moderna-phase-1-results-show-210000747.html
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO, July 14 (Reuters) – Moderna Inc’s experimental vaccine for COVID-19 showed it was safe and provoked immune responses in all 45 healthy volunteers in an ongoing early-stage study, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday
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Great explanation William . .
GeoffW
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https://thevaccinereaction.org/2020/05/volunteer-describes-his-serious-reaction-in-modernas-mrna-covid-19-vaccine-trial/
‘Ian Haydon, 29, of Seattle has spoken out about the severe adverse reactions he suffered 12 hours after receiving the second of two doses of the mRNA-1273 vaccine. Hayden is one of four participants who had Grade 3 reactions to the vaccine and one of three who experienced Grade 3 “systemic symptoms” after getting a second dose of 250 µg of the vaccine.’
‘The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) describes a Grade 3 adverse event as “severe or medically significant but not immediately life-threatening; hospitalization or prolongation of hospitalization indicated; disabling; limiting self care” such as “bathing, dressing and undressing, feeding self, using the toilet, taking medications.’
‘Haydon said he came down with a fever of over 103 degrees and that he felt sicker than he ever has before. He sought medical care at an urgent care center. After he was released from the center and returned home, he fainted.’
‘What is noteworthy is that nine percent of the participants experienced these reactions. Imagine what this would mean were this vaccine to be given to tens of millions of people living in the U.S.’
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But weren’t all of these seen in those who got highest of the three doses? I do see that this eye-ball highest doses has hence forth been abandoned.
So, what’s your point? If it’s the fact that clinical science isn’t perfect….DUH!
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The Phase I ‘vaccine’ tests are purposely a dose-escalation study to help find adverse reactions to the protein package that evokes an immune system response. Moderna stated, that based on the Phase 1 tests, it appears, that a single 100 ug injection of RNA1273 will be sufficient to invoke an immune system response, to protect against covid.
The person that had an adverse reaction to mRNA-1273 received five times more of the ‘vaccine’ package two 250 ug injections, of 500 ug, as compared to a single injection of 100 ug and his sever reaction was to the second injection. There would likely have been no second injection if the person had a severe reaction to the first injection.
The Phase 1 test results were good, because there were no changes required because of adverse reactions and if Phase 2/3 test are successful and confirm a single 100 ug injection, super high-volume manufacturing possible. A billion doses a year.
It is my understanding that the patients for the Phase 2 and Phase 3 tests, will be receiving single doses.
I do not have details of the phase 2 and 3 tests. I would assume there will still be some people who receive more and less, in a single dosage, than 100 ug, to get more information on effectiveness and side effects of the package.
It will be interesting to look at the Phase 2/3 results. The companies involved seem very confident, in that it appears based on the news releases, the consortium that will produce the package, are currently proceeding with setting up production plants, with the expectation, that the production plants will be required to produce the package.
This is a link to the Moderna Phase 1 study paper and a quote from the paper.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483
METHODS
We conducted a phase 1, dose-escalation, open-label trial including 45 healthy adults, 18 to 55 years of age, who received two vaccinations, 28 days apart, with mRNA-1273 in a dose of 25 μg, 100 μg, or 250 μg. There were 15 participants in each dose group.
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With more than 10 years in fighting for improved animal conditions, Kate Blaszak of Melbourne is “the proverbial canary in the coalmine” that stopped singing and dies first, warning the miners of oxygen dearth.
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/07/we-are-brewing-up-next-pandemic-now.html
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Great news Jo. I noticed the linked news story is almost 2 months old, so am wondering why this was not more of a splash, at the time, and also now.
Looks like we’ll be finding out soon if that continued to perform.
The questions in my mind are the cost of effective doses, and the time-frame involved in scaling up production to supply whole countries with enough of it to normalize a society and reduce the disruption’s duration.
i.e. this could take a long time to scale-up. The expense of doing so would be high, but if it ends the disruption of whole economies that investment will obviously will pay off for the larger economies, to go ahead and do it first.
Here’s hoping manufacturers can make an affordable cocktail which can supply billions of doses before mid-2021, as it’s adding 7 million new cases during July alone, and the active cases load is up to 5.34 million today. It’ll be 6.5 million by end of July (10 days). In other words, it’s about to go to 3 million new active cases being added to the active total every month from now. And that’s with no extra acceleration occurring.
So it’s going to take time for a new and effective drug to make a dent in that, which is why the time frame really matters now.
This is the current total cases acceleration curve projected out to the last day of August (~28 million cases):
https://i.ibb.co/m4FwRrn/COVID-19-Total-Cases-Globally-2020-07-21-102734.png
As I pointed out again yesterday, we do have extra acceleration occurring within the active cases curves, and the effects on numbers will be sudden. By the end of August the active cases will more then double over now. With that curve it’s likely to reach 60 to 70 million active cases by the end of September.
This is the current active cases curve projected out to the last day of August (11.5 million actives):
https://i.ibb.co/5xrbTkh/COVID-19-Cummulative-Active-Cases-Global-2020-07-21-102541.png
As you see, it’s not enough to have the cocktail of working antivirals, it’s delivering it on a large enough and affordable scale within just 3 months, which is essential as well. As beyond that time frame it will certainly help, but will it end the disruption, which will be increasing in severity? We need to move very fast now, if these work, for the situation to remain manageable in enough countries.
We need to “WWII” this thing, we have to mobilize to scale up production to smash it, before it over takes our ability to do so.
Above all else, the thing with will make it possible to do so, is redoubling our national and also state QUARANTINE border controls, and especially our personal ISOLATION effort within cities, right now, and do it in every country.
That alone will ensure that its scale stays much smaller, so that we can assuredly beat it with antiviral drug production and delivery, before it can get too far ahead of us in scale, for even anti-virals to quash it.
It should not be hard to see why maintaining very strict quarantines, personal isolation, anti-transmission habits, processes and materials is absolutely essential — these must not be stopped.
Plus heads of government need to understand that they’ll be held personally responsible for failure as this disease winds down again. It’s not acceptable to say a national economy matters more than the people in a pandemic, so sacrifice tens of millions at the alter of the economy god.
Did the economy take priority over battle hardware and soldiers lives and equipment in World War II? No, it immediately became a much lower order priority for the duration. And look at the results in the core of the Western world, predominantly economic boom for decades, it ended the malaise after the 1930s Depression (or the GFC and the corruption of too-big-to-fail, in our time).
Economy doesn’t take the highest priority in a global pandemic either, health does. Yes, economy remains important, nationally and personally, but it’s NOT the number 1 priority for the duration. The job of Treasurer and Industry related Ministers is to accept that, and earn their salary by professionally MANAGING the economic policies to a recovery on the other side. They’re doing that, and the Govt on the whole appears to have the correct weight of priorities. So I’m not interested in the continual hand wringing about the priorities of the economy and business aims and interests – those can wait.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time but walking is a higher priority than chewing the gum when the priorities require more emphasis on one, over the other.
I do not believe for one second that it’s any sort of traditional Conservative VALUES, to value making money over people, and community health, and longevity. That may be the narrative of people masked as Political ‘Conservatives’ pushing a business at all costs agenda, but that has nothing to do with being actually a Conservative. And if you’re wondering, I’m 55 and not in a higher risk group, I’d be almost certain to survive COVID-19. I’m saying this because it’s right, not because I’m scared or because I’m older, not because it’s convenient or popular. Dismissive nonsense and endlessly repeated bad arguments which seek to avoid what’s become necessary, are not going to make this go away. We deal with this as soon as humanly possible or it will trigger and create a decade or two of genuine human misery, which does not merely refer to us having empty bank accounts.
And borders and barriers may have just become the most important tool we have to protect ourselves with, but even that is no excuse for isolationism because if this pandemic’s disruption and damage is not fixed everywhere, it will not be fixed anywhere. It will be your grand children being sent to resulting war zones to put an end to the disorder and hellish conditions that are produced. There are much bigger issues in play than a parochial fixation on economy and business.
The faux ‘Conservative’ media commentators need to wake up to themselves as well. We’re months from economic and political disruption on a scale we’ve not experienced before, and COVID-19 merely has to keep doing, for another 3 to 4 months, what it has done for the past 2 months, just slowly accelerate at about 1.02 times every day.
Or rather we’re allowing it to continue to grow at 1.02 each day, and the result of that acceleration alone will be cash-’o-strophic for everyone. There isn’t going to be any economic recoveries while that’s occurring and we don’t likewise have unthinkably massive quantities of effective affordable anti-viral doses available everywhere, before the end of this year. And very strict quarantine and isolation policies with it in the ‘hot zones’, to keep the scale of the infection down, so we can still have a chance of beating it.
Hopefully, that effective mass-produced cocktail comes much sooner than end of 2020 as once 50 million doubles in one month to 100 million we’re in big trouble. Australia may still muddle through relatively smoothly, as fortunately both our Govts and the people are generally performing very well, and learning and adapting fast. But our most significant foreign partners won’t be OK. And that will become our biggest problem very quickly.
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Read the original report from the woman who gathered this virus that was then enhanced with bits of hiv to make it transmissible. This was done in a bio weapons lab she mentioned that the lab was visited by two American inspectors and declared unfit for purpose. She has disappeared. The Chinese had the WHO in their pocket and they originally stated it was not transmissible between people.
It would seem the Chinese got their wish in shutting down the West. I refuse from this point in buying anything from China.
It would seem I am not alone as umpteen thousand of their factories have shut and the two main export docks are laying idle.
We will beat this virus as we have beaten others in the past. When I was young children with callipers on their legs and crutches,some in wheel chairs from the polio epidemic were everywhere then along came Mr Salk with his vaccine good bye polio. I do remember lining up at school to get measles mumps whooping cough and polio injections.
We will beat it for sure.
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Ah!, it’s all relative, like they say: if you play with fire, careful, you might get burned.
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The Astra Zeneca vaccine AZD1222 has proven effective in creating anti-bodies for CV19:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/20/oxford-universitys-coronavirus-vaccine-shows-positive-immune-response-in-an-early-trial.html
The referenced page has a link to details on the trials published in the Lancet.
Australia is in negotiation with AZ for supply of vaccine but they are in a long queue.
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Yawn! Every time I put on the TV news or read online news media there is a new vaccine ‘on the horizon’.
If it was that easy, why is there none for the common flu. There are vaccines for influenza, supposedly, but why don’t people take them up?
902/1100 deaths (over all age groups not just the over 65 year olds of COVID-19) of influenza in 2019/2017, respectively, and not many people make the effort.
Why am I always a cynic? Sigh!
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I don’t know why you are a cynic but what you’ve just demonstrated is that you don’t know much about what you are talking about.
Lots of people “take up” the seasonal flu vaccine.
What is common flu? The common cold? It is a catch all phrase that includes a bunch of viruses and is not a reportable disease so there is no reason to spend money developing a vaccine.
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Yes, they do, and mostly due to a media barrage and the fact that it is “free”, provided by the taxpayer.
But, take pause to reflect: “The elderly are frequent targets in the push for the flu shot, yet there is evidence that those receiving the flu vaccine for three to five consecutive years runs a 10-fold increase for developing Alzheimer’s disease than those who did not have any flu shots.” ( Dark secret: there are neurotoxins in vaccines)
from: https://www.naturalhealth365.com/flu-shot-vaccine-dangers-1640.html
Anecdote warning ! I have a 97 year old aquaintance who has recently taken up residence in a nursing home. Nurse comes in and says, “Today I am going to give you a flu shot, Mr. X.”
Mr.X replies, “No I don’t want the flu shot thankyou.”
After more persuasive effort by the nurse Mr. X states, “I have never ever had a flu shot and I am not going to start now!”
Nurse leaves room in confusion, probably amazed at how stupid Mr. X is. “Doesn’t he realise he is in danger of dying if he gets the flu?”
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thanks ROb, that is the funniest thing I’ve read since the old cold fusion papers.
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One interesting aspect of all the corona virus vaccines in development and soon to be released….I am hearing a lot of people from all walks of life saying that they would not take the vaccine. They’d rather take their chances. Most people saying ” They missed the virus the last three years, ya think they really got this one figured out in such a short amount of time”
These people are also no being wishy washy, or hemming and hawing…They have some really strong opinions…these are educated people.
Now I haven’t heard of any discussion in the news from either side of the vaccine debate, so these individuals are not puppeting what the main stream media feeds them….seems to me an honest “I just don’t trust them” kind of thing. Surprised me as I get the same from most people I ask.
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At the end of May Swiss immunologists led by Professor Onur Boyman published what is probably the most important study on Covid19 lethality to date. This preprint study comes to the conclusion that the usual antibody tests that measure antibodies in the blood (IgG and IgM) can recognize at most one fifth of all Covid19 infections.
The reason for this discrepancy is that in most people the new coronavirus is already neutralized by antibodies on the mucous membrane (IgA) or by cellular immunity (T-cells). In most of these cases, no symptoms or only mild symptoms develop.
This means that the new coronavirus is probably much more common than previously thought and the lethality per infection is up to five times lower than previously assumed. The real lethality could thus be well below 0.1% and hence in the range of strong seasonal influenza.
http://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108308v1
Yawn..when will this scamdemic end…
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Cases & Deaths
From: https://www.barnhardt.biz/2020/07/18/breaking-polio-pandemic-polio-tests-come-back-positive-nationwide-polio-cases-surging-two-million-americans-paralyzed-by-christmas-iron-lung-shortage-catastrophe/
The “extremely-competent” ruling class now freely admits that they have been counting… this is just unreal… positive ANTIBODY tests as CoronaCold “cases”.
So, as herd immunity grows for this SEASONAL COLD virus, they are using the herd immunity itself as a lying “proof” of “more cases”.
You all realize that this exact dynamic occurs EVERY YEAR, yes? A cold bug goes around, a bunch of people get it, with many never even being symptomatic, and by spring it fizzles out. Wash, rinse, repeat next October.
This is why the Gates/New World Order chose a Corona virus, aka a cold, as their vector. And if you think that a “vaccine” is possible, or is the real objective of mandatory repeated injections (tracking and sterilization are the real objectives), then I have a bridge to sell you.
There is no cure for the common cold. Which is the entire, premeditated point.
From: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-overview.html
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Testing-Guidance.pdf
Deaths. This how they tally the deaths.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpYUz0ZsF_E
As you are probably aware, tragically, two men in their 90’s died from COVID 19 in Victoria. (Dan was still able to keep a straight face relaying this information, which I see every week in my local newspaper and have seen for years and years.) Get a grip people!
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“Just the facts ma’am, just the facts.”
Have alook at the ABC news this evening on “Key points from Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Chief Medical Officer Brett Sutton’s latest coronavirus update.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-22/daniel-andrews-coronavirus-update-brett-sutton-mask-vaccine/12480944
There is not even a mention of the latest deaths. Isn’t this pandemic about an extremely dangerous virus that kills lots of people? That’s why we have such draconian “rules” to make sure it doesn’t kill people? No, just cases, and naughty people (9 out 0f 10)not self-isolating after being tested and awaiting the results.) What does this tell you? The bloody virus is definitely out of control, and cannot be traced. (don’t worry)
Meanwhile in Albury/Wodonga this morning 60 or so staff at a hospital can’t get across the border to work at the hospital. The “rules” were changed to help stop the deadly virus. Elective surgery cancelled and possibly there could have been deaths – we will never know.
Get a grip people! We are being gamed.
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