AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine is up to 90% effective, the company said Monday in a press release, making it the third pharmaceutical firm to report promising vaccine news, following Pfizer and Moderna. AstraZeneca, which partnered with University of Oxford researchers to develop its two-dose vaccine, reported efficacy from two different dosing regimens; one led to 62% efficacy and another to 90%, with an average, the company says, of 70%. The company’s vaccine was initially developed by Oxford scientists, who started with a disabled cold virus that commonly infects chimpanzees. It’s a more traditional approach than the strategy used by Moderna and Pfizer, both of which relied on the genetic mRNA code from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The Oxford team used the cold virus as a molecular Trojan horse (technically known as a “vector”) to disguise the true payload: material from SARS-CoV-2, which triggers the human immune system into action. The chimp virus helps to deliver the coronavirus more efficiently without causing actual COVID-19. Among people who received a half dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and then a full dose about a month later, about 90% were protected from symptomatic COVID-19 illness. Among those getting two full doses of vaccine a month apart, 62% were protected from getting sick. None of the people receiving either regimen were hospitalized or became severely ill. The data, part of a scheduled efficacy review, are based on 131 cases of COVID-19 among both the vaccinated and placebo groups. But because the full set of data has not been published, vaccine experts—including regulators—are still trying to figure out why the different regimens led to different results. “The different levels of efficacy with two different dosing regimens is scientifically intriguing,” says Dr. Jessica Justman, associate professor of medicine in epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and senior technical director of ICAP at Columbia, a global public health services group. One possible explanation relates to the vaccine’s design. Because it relies on a weakened cold virus to deliver the COVID-19 viral material, recipients’ immune systems may actually be mounting a response to the cold virus rather than the coronavirus. Halving the first dose helps to dampen this immune response to the cold virus, possibly increasing the response to the coronavirus. “We know with other [cold] virus vectors you do get immunity to the vector,” says Dr. Anna Durbin, professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University and an investigator running one of the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine trials. “It may be that the higher [first] dose induced more immunity against the vector so when the second dose came in, it didn’t express the [SARS-CoV-2] protein as well. But we don’t know that yet.” It’s also possible that the discordant results have something to do with the way the trials were conducted. Testing of the half dose+full dose regimen, which was done in the U.K., began after the company’s combined U.K.-Brazil trials had started and many participants already received the originally planned two full doses. Fewer people received the former combination—nearly 9,000 people received two full doses, while only 2,700 received the half dose+full dose regimen. Those in the latter group have been followed for a shorter period of time, and simply may not have had enough time to develop COVID-19. In the U.S. trials, however, all participants are still receiving two full doses of vaccine. Results from those tests could help to explain some of the discrepancy. “I will be very interested to see if we are going to see the same results or different results from the [U.S.] trial,” Durbin says. She also notes that it would be challenging to change the U.S. trials at this point to include a half-dose+full dose regimen—the vaccine trial design was vetted and approved before they began, and modifying them would potentially compromise the data, as scientists would no longer be comparing similar groups of people across different sites. The U.K. and Brazil data also suggest that the AstraZeneca vaccine may be helping to prevent transmission of the virus. If true, that would be an “added bonus,” says Durbin. However, the company did not say how many of the 131 confirmed COVID-19 cases among trial participants tested positive but experienced no symptoms. In the U.K. and Brazil studies, the researchers tested volunteers weekly, so they could understand how many people developed asymptomatic disease, and study them for their response to the vaccine. In the U.S. study, people are only tested if they develop COVID-19 symptoms, meaning that among those who are positive, researchers are comparing how sick the vaccinated people get to how ill those receiving placebo get. All of which means that the AstraZeneca results, while encouraging, leave a lot of unanswered questions. It’s not clear how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will interpret the data, and whether it will recommend the half dose+full dose regimen, or require more data to be collected about that approach. One factor that may play a role: with infections continuing to rise around the world, it’s becoming critical to vaccinate as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. And if the half dose+full dose regimen proves more effective when the final data are revealed, then it also has the advantage of immunizing more people with the same amount of vaccine. “It’s a win-win,” says Justman. “You get better protection and provide it to more people.” But it’s still too early to tell whether that’s the case, and also too early to start making decisions about which vaccine you might choose if given the option. “The advice I would give today, on Nov. 23, is to sit back and wait and see what additional information comes out,” says Justman. “As much as we want all the information right now, I think we need to just be patient and let things play out through proper scientific and regulatory channels.” from https://ift.tt/3fqdhOA Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
0 Comments
With three vaccine makers—Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca—now reporting that their COVID-19 shots are 90% or more effective, governments are starting to make decisions about how to distribute the first doses, which will be in limited supply. In the U.S., that initial group will include health care workers, essential workers like law enforcement personnel and first responders, adults with chronic health conditions, and adults over 65 years of age. In a report published Monday in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) laid out four ethical principles that it says should guide how to distribute the first limited doses of any authorized vaccine to those groups. “During a pandemic, ethical guidelines can help steer and support decisions around prioritization of limited resources,” the authors write. “Consideration of ethical values and principles has featured prominently in discussions about allocation of COVID-19 vaccines. This consideration is particularly relevant because the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted long-standing, systemic health and social inequities.” Those principles include maximizing benefits, which means focusing on people at highest risk of COVID-19, as well as people who are critical to keeping others protected and healthy, such as health care workers. Another important principle is justice, to ensure that everyone, regardless of their economic or social situation, can have access to the vaccine. Related to this is the importance of mitigating health inequities, which are especially apparent with COVID-19, since people of certain racial and ethnic backgrounds are more severely affected by the disease. Those making decisions about how to distribute any authorized vaccines, the ACIP concludes, should keep in mind ways to even out such disparities and ensure that differences in access or health outcomes are not exacerbated. Finally, the group urged transparency in explaining how prioritization decisions are made, so the public understands the data and evidence on which they were based. Such transparency could go a long way toward rebuilding the public’s trust in the scientific process behind the vaccines, which has been eroded by confusing and conflicting messages in recent months. Revealing the reasons why certain decisions about allocating limited vaccine doses are made could start to increase people’s confidence in public health advice and its ability to support the health of not just individuals, but populations as well. from https://ift.tt/2J29cEq Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Months into the COVID-19 pandemic, with cases and hospitalizations surging across the country, health care workers are getting burned out mentally and physically. Sarah Flanagan, a Florida nurse who routinely treats COVID-19 patients, decided to cut back her hours and to switch to working part-time after feeling disheartened by the spread of false claims online about the pandemic. “I feel undervalued and disposable,” she says. She’s also worried about how little the health care system has rewarded front line workers. “Senior colleagues are telling me, ‘I want to leave the bedside, I feel exhausted and I don’t know what to do,'” she says. “It makes me afraid for the future.” Catherine Lazaro, a respiratory therapist in Washington state, treated one of the first U.S. COVID-19 patients. Over the course of the last nine months, as her hours increased and staff shortages became commonplace, she saw female colleagues leave their jobs, exhausted from the combined demands of child care and housework. Then, a dozen of her coworkers were furloughed. “I kept thinking, why we are in the middle of a respiratory pandemic, battling a respiratory virus, it doesn’t make any sense to furlough respiratory therapists,” she said. As she scrolled through message after message of desperate colleagues, she shared this message on social media: “From Heroes to Zeroes.” For others, their frustrations have been coupled with worries about bringing the virus home. Sarah Anderson, an OB/GYN in Colorado, decided to continue working and seeing patients while still breastfeeding her five-month-old daughter. “I hope that if I get it I’m creating the antibodies that will help protect [my baby] as well, but nobody really knows that.” She wears a mask at home to avoid exposing her other daughter, who’s five years old, and her husband. Still, Anderson can’t help but worry. “I’ve been talking with a lot of my colleagues about how the public is saying, ‘Thank you for being on the front lines’, they’re writing us thank-you notes and sending us pizza, ” she says. “We don’t need any of that. What we need is for you to stop exposing us.” from https://ift.tt/2KDel6J Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Over the past few days, my social media feeds have been jam-packed with pictures and videos of COVID-19 testing lines that stretch multiple blocks. Some people report waiting hours for their turn, while others say they’re being turned away before ever getting the chance. It’s not just here in the New York metro area, either—similar delays are being reported around the country. The intense testing demand is at least partially due to the fact that the virus is spiking across the U.S.; it’s natural that more people would seek testing as their risk of exposure increases due to local outbreaks. But this new wave of demand also comes just a few days before Thanksgiving, and multiple friends working at testing sites have told me that many people are seeking tests specifically because they’re planning to gather with family this week. Public-health officials, epidemiologists, doctors and nurses have been begging people to stay home this Thanksgiving amid fears that the holiday will be a national super-spreader event. But optimism bias—the idea that “it won’t happen to me”—is a hell of a drug, and many people are choosing to congregate despite the risks (air travel this weekend approached its highest pandemic-era point yet). If you’ve decided to gather with friends or family this Thanksgiving, getting a test first is certainly better than not getting one at all—if you test positive, you clearly know that you should cancel your plans and stay home. All this testing will result in better, more complete data, too. But what some people don’t seem to realize is this: receiving a single negative COVID-19 test result days before a gathering can’t guarantee that you won’t wind up infecting others at that event. Why? Once you’re exposed to the virus, it can take several days for it to replicate in your body to the point that you would test positive—this is called the “incubation period.” The upshot is this: You could be exposed on a Sunday, test negative the next day, but be contagious by Thursday. Moreover, in the Thanksgiving context, it’s also possible to test negative today, pick up the virus while traveling home, then be infectious by the time everyone’s together on Thursday. And don’t forget that about 40% of people with COVID-19 never experience symptoms, so you could still be a carrier even if you’re feeling fantastic. Tests are only one part of the pandemic toolbox, best used in combination with a 14-day quarantine period. A single negative test is good news, but not free license to forgo other precautions. And the danger here goes beyond you and your immediate family—when it comes to an infectious disease like this one, we’re all potential links in a chain. If you wind up spreading the virus at the Thanksgiving table, even if nobody in your family gets ill, they could then go on to infect others, who could wind up sick, or worse. That’s why experts want you to stay home—it’s not just about individual health, it’s about public health. My advice? Stay home, hop on Zoom with the family (the company’s lifting its typical 40-minute limit this year), and do everything you can to break those chains. “A Zoom Thanksgiving is better than an ICU Christmas,” has become this year’s unofficial PSA. I couldn’t agree more. And if you need some help having that difficult conversation with your family, we’ve got you covered. This story was adapted from The Coronavirus Brief, TIME’s daily COVID-19 newsletter. Click here to sign up. from https://ift.tt/2J4fgME Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ (LONDON) — AstraZeneca said Monday that late stage trials of its COVID-19 vaccine developed with Oxford University were “highly effective’’ in preventing disease. The results are based on interim analysis of trials in the U.K. and Brazil of the vaccine developed by Oxford University and manufactured by AstraZeneca. No hospitalizations or severe cases of COVID-19 were reported in those receiving the vaccine, AstraZeneca said. “These findings show that we have an effective vaccine that will save many lives. Excitingly that one of our dosing regimens may be around 90% effective,’’ said Professor Andrew Pollard, the chief investigator for the trial. The trial looked at two different dosing regimens — a half dose of the vaccine followed by a full dose at least one month apart was 90% effective. A second regimen using two full doses one month apart was 62% effective. The combined results showed an average efficacy rate of 70%. “This vaccine’s efficacy and safety confirm that it will be highly effective against COVID-19 and will have an immediate impact on this public health emergency,’’ AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said. “Furthermore, the vaccine’s simple supply chain and our no-profit pledge and commitment to broad, equitable and timely access means it will be affordable and globally available, supplying hundreds of millions of doses on approval.” Two other drugmakers, Pfizer and Moderna, last week reported preliminary results from late-stage trials showing that their COVID-19 vaccines were almost 95% effective. from https://ift.tt/3nPakKs Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ A version of this article was published in It’s Not Just You, a weekly newsletter from TIME editor-at-large Susanna Schrobsdorff. Subscribe here to get your weekly serving.
You’ve done all you can do today, tomorrow you get to try again. #breathe. ? Well hello! I’m so glad you’re here. This week we have a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author of the bestselling novel, Daughters of Erietown @ConnieSchultz about empathy, Twitter, and the art of breathing. The Gods of Small KindnessesA few times a day, Connie Schultz, the Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist and bestselling novelist performs a small pandemic-era miracle on Twitter. It’s pretty simple: she reminds us to breathe, just #breathe. From those small daily bids for connection, she’s carved out a whole swath of empathy in the snarkiest corner of social media, a kind of empathy brigade. Sometimes Connie posts a goofy photo of her kids or grandkids with that reminder, sometimes she just gives us permission to let go of a tangled day without self-recriminations by saying: “You’ve done all you can do today, tomorrow you get to try again.” Day in, day out, she’s there asking us to pause, to exhale fully so we can move forward.
You’d think a tiny balloon of sincerity would get lost or mocked in an arena where we crave new distractions, new outrages, newer news, snarkier snark. But the opposite has happened. She’s been flooded with gratitude from her more than 200,000 followers. They send notes about their lives, their problems, their hopes, and they interact with each other kindly, proving Connie’s theory that there’s room for tenderness on Twitter. “I was unprepared for this kind of response,” she says. “I’ve been so touched by these confessions, totally unrelated to me sometimes–just threads where people really get into the weeds on how hard this is–and by how quickly others swarm to comfort them.” At the start of the pandemic, when Connie had to remind herself to take deep de-stressing breaths, she decided that reminding her followers to do the same was a small thing she could do when it was hard to know what to do. It resonated. “People want to know that they’re not alone, to feel that they’re not losing their minds if they’re scared or worried– that we all need a reminder to breathe.” Connie says she realized just how hungry people were for connection during the summer of 2019 when she posted a piece about her brother’s suicide. She braced herself fearing the worst reaction, it was the internet after all. But she thousands of compassionate responses, many of them from other survivors. “I was overwhelmed,” she says. “I realized they’d lost someone to suicide, and they feel like you…There’s so much shame attached to it, which makes the grieving so much hard because you can’t reach out to people.” Reading the threads on Connie’s Tweets makes you believe that vulnerability is still the most generous of gifts–even on social media. So does Chrissy Teigen’s courage in sharing the searing reality of her miscarriage giving comfort to so many women who’ve lost a child. She too says she was met with overwhelming love. This brings me to some of the beautifully honest readers of this newsletter who’ve sent me their stories privately these last few weeks. The kind souls who’ve been isolated for months alone in pandemic quarantine because of serious health conditions wonder if they’re the only ones feeling crazy or angry. They’re not. Neither are those whose kids struggled with the kinds of issues that are hard to talk about in ordinary times, much less during a national crisis with so much loss. Neither are the caregivers who’ve been shouldering so much for so long on their own, and they’re afraid of breaking. All of you have pushed forward with such love and humility, I’m in awe. Summoning gratitude isn’t easy in a year like this. But evidence of human kindness is out there. And also canine kindness. For one of my readers, that evidence showed up earlier this year in the form of a rescue dog who arrived just when she was needed. Her owner says that this dog has been “a constant reminder to look into the storms and find the beauty in the process. To walk when you want to run, to sit and breathe when you really could hyperventilate.” .? MOMENT OF HAPPY ✨Rockefeller the Owl has recovered and is about to be released securing his spot as the best thing about this week in 2020. COPING KIT ⛱️? ? The Best Alternative to Outrage Scrolling Check out this profile of Smith College Professor Loretta J. Ross who advocates calling people “in” instead of publicly calling people out for some transgression. “I think we actually sabotage our own happiness with this unrestrained anger,” says Ross. “Calling in” is like calling out, but done privately and with respect. “It’s a call out done with love,” she says. ? How to Tell Your Family You’re Not Coming Home for the Holiday “It’s a conversation you don’t want to put off.” writes TIME‘s Belinda Luscombe. ? Ways to Breathe Better and Ward Off Anxiety Did you know there’s a phenomenon called “email apnea,” where multitasking office staff breathe irregularly and shallowly, or even hold their breath, for half a minute or while on their devices? Here’s why you should breathe through your nose, slow your breathing down (to five or six seconds in and five or six seconds out), and extend your exhales. Give. Recieve. Connect. ?Eileen is a self-described liberal, feminist, hippie-New Yorker. A retired social worker, she worked primarily with the LBGTQIA+ and immigrant populations. In early April she was matched by Pandemic of Love with a single mother named Christine in Mobile, Alabama who needed help. Eileen describes the initial shock of the connection as one between “two very different people from two very different worlds.” When Eileen found out that she had voted for President Trump in the last election and was planning on voting for him again, her initial instinct was to ask to be reassigned to another family. Christine had the same thought at the start, “to be honest, I didn’t think I was going to like her when we met. She is a New Yorker and I am just a Southern girl at heart.” But the pair decided to move forward. And since July, Eileen has been sending Christine and her family bi-weekly help for groceries and essentials and upon learning that Christine’s 8-year old daughter loves to read, she started to send her books. “I honestly do not know what I would have done without her all this time,” says Christine. The two unlikely friends speak and text frequently, and have talked about everything from the Holocaust to the Confederate Army. Christine is certain she and Eileen will be friends for life. And while Eileen began the relationship thinking Christine was living in a red-state bubble, she says she’s shocked to realize “how long I have been living in a bubble, too.” –Shelly Tygielski, Founder, Pandemic of Love COMFORT DOGS ??Here’s sweet and very comforting Boone shared by Sarah and Caleb of Charleston, SC.
?️Meet Ziggy shared by Debbie of Fayetteville, AR. who says Ziggy has been bringing her joy for 10 years.
? Here’s loyal Koko shared by Mary who says she wouldn’t have made it through months of quarantine without him. ?️ And here’s Jen, shared by Andrea of Suwanee, GA who says Jen is very Zen. Seriously, she and Andrea meditate together.
?Have ideas, questions, comforting dog pix? Email me: [email protected]. ? SHARE this edition of It’s Not Just You on social here ? Did someone forward you this newsletter? SUBSCRIBE to It’s Not Just You by clicking here. from https://ift.tt/2J2Hsze Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ It’s a rare glimmer of hope in a brutal and battering pandemic year: in November, both Moderna and Pfizer reported that their much-anticipated COVID-19 vaccines are 95% effective in protecting people against getting sick with the disease. Scientists were encouraged (and even surprised by the magnitude of the protection), public health officials finally saw what could be the beginning of the end of the pandemic, and families everywhere began fantasizing about a return to normalcy where gathering around the table to celebrate the holidays are a given and not a matter of public health concern. But the same public health experts who are encouraged by the positive vaccine results are also warning that vaccines aren’t the panacea that many are desperately hoping they will be. And that, even after more people get the shots, we’ll still have to wear masks and stay a respectful six feet apart from each other. First, there’s the question of efficacy. Yes, Moderna and Pfizer reported that their shots are 94.5% and 95% effective, respectively. But that efficacy refers to the vaccines’ ability to protect against COVID-19 disease—and not necessarily against infection with the virus. Both of the rigorous trials to test the vaccines were designed to measure COVID-19 illness—trial volunteers were randomly given either the vaccine or a placebo, and then asked to report any symptoms of COVID-19 they experienced, such as fever, cough, shortness of breath or muscle aches. The study researchers then determined whether or not to test them. If people tested positive, they were logged as a confirmed COVID-19 case, and the researchers then looked at the group of COVID-19 cases and compared how many people had been vaccinated versus how many had gotten placebo. The effectiveness measured whether these people went on to develop more symptoms of COVID-19. That means that people who are vaccinated are not necessarily immune to getting infected; but they are more likely to experience fewer symptoms and not get as sick as those who aren’t vaccinated. That’s still a huge advantage over the virus, since severe COVID-19 sends people to the hospital where they may need intensive care and ventilators to breathe. The more people who can experience milder symptoms and recover at home, the less burden on the health care system and the less exposure that health care workers will have to the virus, which all contributes to better control of the pandemic. However, because the vaccines do not necessarily protect against infection, that means that public health measures such as wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding indoor gatherings are still critical to containing the virus. More data will provide clues about whether people who are vaccinated and never experience symptoms can still spread the disease to others. But that’s not known yet, so experts say it’s better to keep up the behaviors that have proven to stymie spread of COVID-19. In addition, while both Moderna and Pfizer plan to file shortly for authorization to start distributing their vaccines, even after they receive the green light, it will take a while for the shots to be shipped and actually arrive at hospitals, doctors’ offices and pharmacies. Both companies have already begun producing doses, banking on the fact that their vaccines would be effective, but that manufacturing still won’t churn out enough doses to meet demand this year. Because doses will be limited, the government has asked state health departments to submit proposals for how they will distribute vaccines in phases, starting with highest-risk groups like health care workers and other frontline workers with essential jobs such as first responders and law enforcement personnel. As more doses become available, the elderly and people with chronic health conditions would be vaccinated, and eventually, the rest of the population. It’s likely that the majority of the American public won’t be vaccinated until next spring at the earliest. That means that the ultimate goal in controlling the pandemic, herd immunity, likely won’t happen until well into next year, when enough people are vaccinated and can ward off serious illness. “Not until a substantial proportion of the population is vaccinated, and the caseload has dropped to very low levels, will we be able to breathe (without a mask) a sigh of relief,” says Emanuel Goldman, professor of microbiology at Rutgers University. And even then, he points out, researchers will have to remain vigilant about tracking any changes in the virus as it finds fewer and fewer welcoming hosts. “The virus might have other ideas and try to change in a way that makes the vaccine less effective.” Only by vaccinating millions of people, and monitoring how their immune systems react, will experts get a better handle on what it takes to extinguish COVID-19 or at least make it much more difficult for it to spread. “The big message is that we have an additional tool [in the form of vaccines] for fighting COVID-19, but we don’t have a tool to replace everything we do just yet,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Hopefully as the country and world gets massively vaccinated, this virus will be essentially backed in, with no place to go because everybody is protected.” With reporting by Amy Gunia/Hong Kong from https://ift.tt/3pK2Nyp Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Exclusive: Pfizer CEO Discusses Submitting the First COVID-19 Vaccine Clearance Request to the FDA11/20/2020 On Friday, Pfizer CEO and chairman Albert Bourla announced that the company has filed a request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine, making it the first to do so. In a discussion on TIME 100 Talks, Bourla says that if the FDA authorizes the vaccine, the company will be ready “within hours” from receiving the green light to start distributing the vaccine. Pfizer has been manufacturing doses even while safety and efficacy tests were ongoing, in order to avoid delays in shipping once authorized. According to Bourla, Pfizer is on “on track” to deliver the 50 million doses promised to the U.S. government by the end of the year, with 1.3 billion doses through next year. In an in-depth conversation about the journey the company has taken in developing its vaccine, Bourla admitted that, throughout the process, he wasn’t always sure that having a safe and effective vaccine ready for FDA review in less than a year was possible. “Conviction is a part of it, so I was always telling [our teams] that we will make it, and we will make it by October, and if not us, then who?” he says. “But I knew that it was an extremely risky suggestion, I knew it was going to be difficult, and the stars needed to be aligned all the way to the end.” Pfizer capitalized on a partnership begun in 2018 with German company BioNTech, which was founded by a husband-and-wife team of scientists with expertise in a genetic technology called mRNA. The platform is fast and flexible for developing vaccines, since it only requires knowing the genetic sequence of the virus the vaccine will target, rather than growing and manipulating the virus in question. Still, no mRNA-based vaccine against an infectious disease had ever been approved, so Pfizer and BioNTech began exploring whether influenza might be the first. Instead, when the pandemic hit a year later, the teams shifted their attention to SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, with surprising success. Bourla says the partnership is built on a mutual focus on advancing science, and that the two companies began work, including sharing confidential information, before signing a formal contract, since those agreements can take months. “In fact, we are still finalizing the contractual obligations we have that we need to sign with them,” says Bourla. “It’s the perfect relationship for me. Ugur [Sahin, BioNTech’s co-founder and chief executive] is a wonderful human being, and a great scientist. He shares the same passion [as I do] about saving lives and I’m very optimistic that not only will we do very well together bringing a COVID-19 vaccine to the world, but later hopefully a flu vaccine.” Bourla also believes the success of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, as well as that of Massachusetts-based biotech Moderna (which also has an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate, shown to be 94.5% effective) validates the mRNA platform, and makes it a serious contender for future vaccines and drugs against emerging infectious diseases. That validity of mRNA vaccines will be further tested once their efficacy can be compared to those of other vaccines that use the more proven methods of relying on weakened cold viruses to deliver viral material to the immune system, or selected fragments of viral proteins. While he expressed concern about the skepticism and mistrust that many American have expressed about the COVID-19 vaccines, mostly because they were developed so quickly, Bourla says he hopes the completion of the election and the magnitude of the efficacy and safety data start to reassure people. “The problem is that this vaccine, and the pandemic in general, became the focal point of political debate,” he says. “It was discussed in political rather than scientific terms. We reached an unthinkable point that wearing a mask is a political statement, which I think is wrong. Wearing a mask is something you need to do because science is telling you to do it.” He noted that in an effort to reassure the public about the scientific integrity of the vaccine development and testing process, vaccine makers in the pharmaceutical industry came together in an unprecedented show of support against political pressure by pledging to stick to scientific standards and nothing else. “Myself, I released a lot of letters saying I will never succumb to any political pressure,” he says. “The only pressure we feel at Pfizer is the pressure 7 billion people around the world are giving us for a solution to this pandemic.” Vaccine makers are a little less united on the question of whether they should profit from a pandemic shot. While some have said they will price their vaccines so they don’t profit from them, Bourla says Pfizer is making its vaccine available on a non-for-profit basis only for lower-income countries receiving vaccines through the World Health Organization vaccine distribution coalition run by GAVI. “We have elected for developed countries, to give [the vaccine] at a very low price [around $19.50]. We believe the price allows governments all over the world to give the vaccine free to their citizens,” he says. “If you think about the economic value of a vaccine—I’m not speaking about the human value because there is no way to measure human life—I think the millions of jobs that will not be lost, that hopefully will come back, and the billions in economic value that a successful vaccine will enable—I think it’s not appropriate to discuss if we sell it at $19.50 per dose.” Bourla would not speculate on how long the FDA might take to decide on the company’s EUA request, but given the urgency of the pandemic, that decision could come soon. The agency will likely take into consideration the fact that the vaccine’s 95% effectiveness is in protecting against COVID-19 disease—not preventing infection from the virus. But with cases of COVID-19 continuing to surge around the world, stalling the virus and preventing people from getting sick would be a welcome advantage. More studies will also explore whether people who don’t become sick because they are vaccinated are less likely to spread infection; if that’s the case then the vaccines will be even more critical for controlling the pandemic. “I hope the same time next year, we will be in a very, very different place,” he says. “When you have vaccine protection that is that high, 95% for example”—the effectiveness level Pfizer’s vaccine has shown in studies—”it takes less time to be able to develop protection through a vaccination scheme. So I truly believe the light at the end of the tunnel is not only real but it is bright and is coming. We need to be patient.” from https://ift.tt/2Klf2Bb Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ For this week’s cover on how Americans are reacting to the current surge in covid-19 cases, we turned to London-based artists Sean Freeman and Eve Steben to capture the bleak forecast ahead. The duo, who form There Is Studio and specialize in combining typography and photo illustration, created an eerie, foreboding sense of isolation with a frosted window outside their East London home. “Creating a cover about lockdown while in lockdown is an interesting artistic and production challenge,” says Freeman, who produced the image in less than a day. “We created this against the clock, within our own small isolation bubble —using our own windows, as well as a tremendous amount of prop snow, shot during a grey, but rather warm London day.” This is the eighth TIME cover Freeman has designed, including the iconic “Bitter Pill” cover (Mar. 4, 2013) and the “Last Days of Osama Bin Laden” cover (May 7, 2012). “We’ve felt the harsh reality of covid quite personally here with Eve getting seriously ill from it at the beginning of the pandemic, as well as some friends and family catching it here and abroad,” added Freeman. “On the other hand, the situation also brought some positivity for us.” “Enjoying life at a different pace, also this heartwarming sense of community, cooperation and camaraderie that covid has brought in our neighborhood and beyond, have been a solace. Seeing how the local businesses and residents have been generously helping one another has been absolutely incredible and inspiring.” from https://ift.tt/36UCqNJ Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The myth that children aren’t being impacted by the coronavirus pandemic urgently needs to be dispelled, say actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas and UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. During a TIME 100 Talks discussion, Chopra and Fore spoke with TIME Senior Health Correspondent Alice Park about the challenges that children around the world, especially in developing countries, are facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “This is an extraordinary generation of children, but this is an extraordinary crisis against them,” Fore said. One problem that both Jonas and Fore placed particular emphasis on is the lack of access to education that many children are currently experiencing. “No matter what their circumstances are, even if they’re in refugee camps where they don’t have access to formal educational papers, the one thing that [children] want is their right to an education,” said Jonas, who became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2016 after working with UNICEF to promote children’s rights for nearly a decade. However, Fore said that she’s hopeful that the coronavirus crisis will bring attention to the issues plaguing children’s education on a global scale—and even result in a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to create a more equal playing field for young people everywhere. “We have seen a renewed urgency and commitment from a number of countries, and it usually centers around education. Often there are children in these countries, maybe half or more, who do not have connectivity. So when the schools closed and the teachers were no longer there, children’s learning simply stopped,” she said. “Investing in connecting every school to the internet—and every learner and every teacher—is starting to pick up a lot of interest around the world and we think it can mean that our world can emerge from COVID stronger and more forward-thinking.” Jonas also discussed how there’s something that everyone can learn from the passion that children across the globe have for learning and taking charge of their lives when they have the resources to do so. “The generation right now is kicking and raring to go. With information being at the palm of their hands with the internet, these kids are informing themselves,” she said. “They are ready to make sure that they change the world for the better, that they leave it better than they found it—and I hear so many kids saying that to me. So I feel like it’s such a hopeful time that the planet is going to be inherited by a generation of spirited, amazing children.” from https://ift.tt/3lO96hU Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
Authorhttps://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Archives
April 2023
Categories |