COVID Vaccine (2)

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murphey said:
'polyethylene glycol' - isn't that anti-freeze?
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No. Its a nontoxic polar polymeric material. If you have ever done a colonoscopy prep, you drank a gallon of the stuff.
 
Where are all the new cases coming from?

denverpilot said:
By all accounts not common either, anywhere but the internet full of worried and bored people.

Symptomatic people aren’t out in any “widespread” numbers anywhere. Nowhere.
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BTW, Hi
--Nimzy
 
denverpilot said:
Howdy!

(Edit: Poor JN used to have to work with me. Nobody should have to survive that. LOL.)
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are you saying that nobody should have to survive working for you or have to survive JN working for them?

:)
 
Hello

Long-time, occasional lurker here. Family Practitioner by background, so the medical posts tend to catch my eye.

Must admit, I hadn’t heard of mRNA vaccines before and was a bit wary of “new” technology. A (pilot) friend pointed me to this video and I found it to be a very well-done, apolitical explanation of the technology. It’s about 20 minutes but is pretty interesting.

That said, I’m still a bit wary of “new” technology like this but apparently the general technique has been done in other animals for over 10 years, which is more reassuring.

 
WDD said:
Fun fact. Antifreeze isn’t toxic by itself. It is when the liver breaks it down it creates toxins. If your pet gets antifreeze they treat it with alcohol - yes, think vodka. Keeps the liver so occupied processing the alcohol it minimizes the antifreeze toxin creation.
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In the last few years, manufacturers have been switching to propylene glycol instead of ethylene glycol as the main ingredient in commercial antifreeze in order to avoid environmental toxicity and accidental ingestion by pets or people. Propylene glycol is edible, and is used as a humectant in all sorts of consumable products.

FYI, pretty much any solute can act as an antifreeze: glycols, alcohols, polymers (like PEG), salts, etc. We used all of these materials in the research lab to prevent freezing or ice crystal formation in protein crystallization. Small molecule glycols are favored in automobile cooling systems because they are non-corrosive, fairly thermostable, non-volatile, and are relatively non-viscous. We favor PEGs in the crystallography lab because they are highly viscous and are terrific at suppressing ice crystal formation. If you have ever made ice cream the old-fashioned way in a hand-crank bucket, the freezing solution is a saturated salt-water brine and ice. A saturated salt solution has a freezing point of -20C, perfect for making Georgia peach vanilla ice cream! :p
 
chemgeek said:
In the last few years, manufacturers have been switching to propylene glycol instead of ethylene glycol as the main ingredient in commercial antifreeze in order to avoid environmental toxicity and accidental ingestion by pets or people. Propylene glycol is edible, and is used as a humectant in all sorts of consumable products.

FYI, pretty much any solute can act as an antifreeze: glycols, alcohols, polymers (like PEG), salts, etc. We used all of these materials in the research lab to prevent freezing or ice crystal formation in protein crystallization. Small molecule glycols are favored in automobile cooling systems because they are non-corrosive, fairly thermostable, non-volatile, and are relatively non-viscous. We favor PEGs in the crystallography lab because they are highly viscous and are terrific at suppressing ice crystal formation. If you have ever made ice cream the old-fashioned way in a hand-crank bucket, the freezing solution is a saturated salt-water brine and ice. A saturated salt solution has a freezing point of -20C, perfect for making Georgia peach vanilla ice cream! :p
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Ok, who else had to look up humectant? Come on now, don't be shy.
 
Apparently even medical providers are hesitant. The numbers I saw in a WaPo article today said that only 50-66% would be willing to take it (more would after some period of time). Partly political and partly because they think it's rushed.
 
wsuffa said:
Apparently even medical providers are hesitant. The numbers I saw in a WaPo article today said that only 50-66% would be willing to take it (more would after some period of time). Partly political and partly because they think it's rushed.
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I would like to see the packet submitted by Pfizer for the EUA so I can form an opinion on whether I consider it reasonably safe. It is clear that the FDA has been subject to undue influence when it came to the EUAs for hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma. In a world where local officials are being pressured to break the law for partisan ends, I have little confidence in the vaccine committees ability to arrive at a unbiased decision. So: show me the data.
 
Wow! A video on science and medicine, by a scientist and physician who actually deals with this disease on a daily basis and clearly knows what’s he’s taking about.

Thank you for sharing. Excellent video!
Llewtrah381 said:
Hello

Long-time, occasional lurker here. Family Practitioner by background, so the medical posts tend to catch my eye.

Must admit, I hadn’t heard of mRNA vaccines before and was a bit wary of “new” technology. A (pilot) friend pointed me to this video and I found it to be a very well-done, apolitical explanation of the technology. It’s about 20 minutes but is pretty interesting.

That said, I’m still a bit wary of “new” technology like this but apparently the general technique has been done in other animals for over 10 years, which is more reassuring.

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Chuckled at this forwarded to me by a lifer retired CxO who’s last company had budgets ending in “B” also — but not as just a fiscal road bump in fines. LOL.

5147a217e1316196c12d837fbf27e6d9.jpg


What do y’all suppose retail price will be on these, and profit margins? I do infrastructure numbers and don’t have enough frame of reference to even make a SWAG.

I suspect that’s the next public freak out if they’re successful. “I have to pay HOW much to get this thing?”

How many “B”s?
 
denverpilot said:
What do y’all suppose retail price will be on these, and profit margins? I do infrastructure numbers and don’t have enough frame of reference to even make a SWAG.

I suspect that’s the next public freak out if they’re successful. “I have to pay HOW much to get this thing?”

How many “B”s?
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Several news sites have consistently reported $20/dose in the US for the Pfizer one and around $35 for Moderna’s. Not sure what the retail price will be. Given the volume of doses either/both will give (and two doses per person) that’s still a very good profit, I bet.
 
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Llewtrah381 said:
Several news sites have consistently reported $20/dose in the US for the Pfizer one and around $35 for Moderna’s. Not sure what the retail price will be. Given the volume of doses either/both will give (and two doses per person) that’s still a very good profit, I bet.
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Well assuming everyone in the US (unlikely) got only the Pfizer variant (also unlikely) at $20....

That’s $6.8B in gross revenue.

Will easily pay for settling the lawsuits and sealing them, could even call it a tiny percentage of COGS.

LOL. Kidding.

The real question would be whether there will be one bad outcome in 10000 patients which would be $200K in gross revenue to pay the lawyers and settle out of court to seal the records.

Make it 20000 if it’ll take $400K in gross revenue. Etc.

Fun with numbers.
 
charheep said:
Here is something I saw today that might answer it a bit.

covid1-600x344.png

covid2-600x499.png
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WTH, does "Community" mean as a category? That seems like a catch-all category which includes (my kid/spouse/roommate) caught it somewhere and brought it home. So a handful of covid transfers ends up with 3-4 covid transfers simply be virtue of living together. If I'm interpreting that correctly, it essentially means the primary means of covid transmission is by having family members at home.
 
SoonerAviator said:
WTH, does "Community" mean as a category? That seems like a catch-all category which includes (my kid/spouse/roommate) caught it somewhere and brought it home.
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Yes. That's what it means. As opposed to catching it as part of a defined outbreak. It's simply circulating in the community at that point. Just like you wouldnt usually know where you caught a common cold.
 
So I’m safer in a Bar than out in the Community?
I consider that a COVID reprieve.

no, not really, I’m still avoiding bars/restaurants until vaccines are out and about.
 
wrbix said:
So I’m safer in a Bar than out in the Community?
I consider that a COVID reprieve.

no, not really, I’m still avoiding bars/restaurants until vaccines are out and about.
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So bars are not part of the community? ;)

From the way they're using the term "community spread," it seems like they're just referring to cases in which the specific route of transmission is unknown.
 
steingar said:
After that debacle the gene therapy folks switched to a new virus, the Adeno-associated virus. This virus doesn't integrate into the genome, but the viral DNA can stay in cells a very long time. Thus you have a way to safely and stably deliver genes into human cells, a very good thing, normally.
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Wait! Is this the BLUE pill or the other pill Jason Bourne needed?;);););)

WDD said:
Fun fact. Antifreeze isn’t toxic by itself. It is when the liver breaks it down it creates toxins. If your pet gets antifreeze they treat it with alcohol - yes, think vodka. Keeps the liver so occupied processing the alcohol it minimizes the antifreeze toxin creation.
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I think all of us should pre-medicate just to be safe:):):)
 
Palmpilot said:
So bars are not part of the community? ;)

From the way they're using the term "community spread," it seems like they're just referring to cases in which the specific route of transmission is unknown.
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Well in my case, my son (under 2yrs old) had his daycare teacher test positive, which meant my son, daughter, wife, and myself were all potentially exposed. So a few days later, wife gets tested per company policy and tests positive. We quarantine for two weeks without a symptom from anyone (not so much as a runny nose). The two kids and I never got a Covid test, but we are assumed by the health department to be "active cases". My wife, who works in medicine, seriously doubts that she had it and chalks it up to a false positive. This is what community spread looks like: you get it despite taking normal precautions and social distancing because that's just the way it works. If we really did have it, great, our bodies had no reaction to it. However, without an antibody test, I don't think there's any way to really know. Elon Musk did his experiment with getting 4 covid-tests and came back with a 50/50 result on being C-19 positive. The tests suck, and the reporting based off of those tests is skewed.
 
Palmpilot said:
So bars are not part of the community? ;)

From the way they're using the term "community spread," it seems like they're just referring to cases in which the specific route of transmission is unknown.
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in which case it would seem to be not a "cluster."
 
PlasticCigar said:
If you have such grave and serious concerns, then it a moral imperative that you share them with the NIH and FDA immediately. I wonder, however, why the people who ARE vaccine makers don’t share those concerns (it’s like saying, I’m not a physician but I read a lot of anatomy books so I know how to take out your appendix better than the surgeon does.”).

Thank you for contributing to the fear-mongering and pseudo-intellectualism that is causing people to be reluctant to get the vaccine, therefore almost guaranteeing thousands more deaths, economic devastation or both.

If you have serious concerns, share them in the appropriate forum. I’m not a vaccine maker either, but I am a vaccine giver and I trust the system. Sometimes you have to choose between multiple less than ideal choices and you’re not going to get a vaccine with a proven 30 year safety record when the virus has only existed for a year.

I just recently saw a COVID patient in her 50s. The nurse said “please come see her now. Her sat is 42% with a good waveform.” She is not atypical for the “sick COVID patient.”

For better or worse, most of the medical side of this pandemic had taken place behind closed doors. You may see the refrigerated morgue trucks or pictures of the defeated healthcare providers but most people who don’t work in the hospital haven’t seen the sick COVID patients because we’re trying to limit transmission. Yes, we make exceptions for children, patient’s who can’t communicate and end of life, but for the most part you’re not going to see the people dying from COVID so for a lot of people that means it’s not “real.” Trust me, it’s very real. They’re not just putting mannequins in the refrigerated trucks.

With any new vaccine there are always concerns, but this would have to be the worst vaccine ever to be worse than COVID. Have you seen the short-term follow-up for COVID survivors? Have you seen how many still aren’t able to go back to work after 3 months (they have jobs, they just can’t physically do it)? How many are still having elevated troponin and signs of ongoing myocardial injury weeks to months out? How many will likely be permanently disabled, yet they survived.

Read the discussion section on this article. The adenovirus vector doesn’t stay around forever. You kill the adenovirus eventually and, often, the body does it so effectively that more than one dose of the vaccine is required.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31605-6/fulltext

Dr. Steingar, I respect your knowledge and experience but please consider the effect of your comments before posting them in a public forum. Your words affect people’s choices, and possibly their lives.
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I don't know you or Steingar, but I have (most likely) had a severe autoimmune reaction to a "safe" vaccine that landed me in the hospital (where the doctors apparently thought I might be dying of AIDS) and left me with long-term consequences for at least a year. I agree with you that the positives of safe vaccines outweigh the possible negatives, but I would never visit or take my kids to a doctor demonstrating your black-and-white attitude. The COVID death rate for kids in the US is 1:1,000,000. About the same as the death rate for the small-pox vaccine. What will be the rate of serious long-term consequences from COVID vaccines? Right now, we have no idea. When the vaccine is available, I will encourage our old folks to get it quickly. After significant use, I expect my wife and I will get it, and even later, I will plan for the kids to get it. None of us will be running out to CVS on day one, and none of us will be acting out of emotion.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Well in my case, my son (under 2yrs old) had his daycare teacher test positive, which meant my son, daughter, wife, and myself were all potentially exposed. So a few days later, wife gets tested per company policy and tests positive. We quarantine for two weeks without a symptom from anyone (not so much as a runny nose). The two kids and I never got a Covid test, but we are assumed by the health department to be "active cases". My wife, who works in medicine, seriously doubts that she had it and chalks it up to a false positive. This is what community spread looks like: you get it despite taking normal precautions and social distancing because that's just the way it works. If we really did have it, great, our bodies had no reaction to it. However, without an antibody test, I don't think there's any way to really know. Elon Musk did his experiment with getting 4 covid-tests and came back with a 50/50 result on being C-19 positive. The tests suck, and the reporting based off of those tests is skewed.
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I've read that the rapid Covid tests are inaccurate. I don't know whether that's what Musk had.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Elon Musk did his experiment with getting 4 covid-tests and came back with a 50/50 result on being C-19 positive. The tests suck, and the reporting based off of those tests is skewed.
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What he used was one of the rapid antigen tests. He did end up being positive on the conventional PCR test. So all he demonstrated with his little 'look at me' episode is the false negative rate of the antigen test in that particular setting of care.
 
Palmpilot said:
I've read that the rapid Covid tests are inaccurate. I don't know whether that's what Musk had.
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The wife supposedly got a PCR test which is supposed to have a low rate of false positives, but it's just hard to believe none of us had even a headache. The wife has some blood clotting factors, so she was prepared to stay doing Lovenox injections if she started having any symptoms. Luckily for us, it was a paper illness.
 
Matthew Rogers said:
You are only off by a factor of 117, but who is counting. Of the age specified data there are 138 deaths in 1,180,000 cases in children. Or 138:1,180,000.

Source
https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/A...COVID-19 State Data Report 11.19.20 FINAL.pdf
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Just as a funny aside.

Direct linking to PDFs is worse public (digital) hygiene than not wearing a mask. NOBODY should click on that either.

Second highest malware / ransomware infection path. Doesn’t matter the source either, high profile sources are the targets for file replacement to get a layer of confusion involved. “But some people didn’t catch it from there!” LOL.

I’m sure as hell not clicking on that link in anything but a sandboxed virtual machine. Ha.

Great way to die a digital death at a rate far far higher than Covid. LOL. :) :) :)

Got backups? :) :) :)
 
SoonerAviator said:
The wife supposedly got a PCR test which is supposed to have a low rate of false positives, but it's just hard to believe none of us had even a headache. The wife has some blood clotting factors, so she was prepared to stay doing Lovenox injections if she started having any symptoms. Luckily for us, it was a paper illness.
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Sorry she is positive. CDC changed guidelines July 17th for us healthcare workers and is about to again making things really loose. She only has to be 10 days post "onset" and one day afebrile without fever reducing meds to return to work. If that Lovenox is for anaphospholipid syndrome, she needs to be extremely careful for DVT (we've been seeing that at my imaging facility). Hang in there ....
 
Well, just found out I have to make the decision. As a volunteer firefighter I'm eligible to be in the first group, sounds like as early as early December. I'm a little surprised it's not mandatory. Don't think it extends to family unfortunately, but at least I'd be less likely to carry it home. Feels a bit unethical though when there's so many at so much higher risk than me.
 
Jim K said:
Well, just found out I have to make the decision. As a volunteer firefighter I'm eligible to be in the first group, sounds like as early as early December. I'm a little surprised it's not mandatory. Don't think it extends to family unfortunately, but at least I'd be less likely to carry it home. Feels a bit unethical though when there's so many at so much higher risk than me.
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There appears to be some doubt about what effect the vaccines will have on contagion.

https://www.fastcompany.com/9057977...ould-still-infect-the-unvaccinated-with-covid
 
It seems you’re acting out of emotion now if you’re letting a rare idiosyncratic response to a vaccine unduly influence your response to vaccines in general.

I don’t take offense at you not wanting me as your doctor...I don’t think I’d want you as my patient. I guess, fortunately for both of us, I’m not hurting for patients right now - saw eight lab-confirmed symptomatic COVID patients today and admitted two and I’m sure I’ll see more tomorrow.

With all due respect, it’s not an issue of being “black or white” but an issue of you failing to understand what your realistic options are.

Although some politicians have suggested otherwise, this virus will not just go away on its own. That’s not how viruses work. The virus goes away when enough people have immunity that it can no longer easily find a susceptible host. This is the concept for “herd immunity.” You get herd immunity when enough people;
A) Get COVID and recover
B) Get vaccinated and develop antibodies
C) A + B

What I said had nothing to do with being “black and white” but merely choosing between the two options that I actually have if I want to leave my house. If my choice is A or B, I would much rather pick B. COVID kills somewhere around 1% of the people who get it, and somewhere around 20% of the “survivors” have short or long term disability. What I said it that it would have to be the worst vaccine ever to be worse than COVID and I stand by this. Sure, it would be nice to pick “D - Don’t get COVID or a vaccine and have the virus magically go away” but that’s fantasy.

That’s like losing your engine at 800’, knowing that you could land straight ahead and damage your plane or maybe try to make it back to the airport and possibly stall, but saying “I don’t like any of those choices - I’m just going to try to restart the engine and hope for the best.” “Hope as a strategy” tends to work poorly in both aviation and medicine.

Unless no one in your household leaves in the next year, there’s a good chance you will get COVID if you engage in any sort of “normalcy.” Your primary ways of avoiding that are to keep your entire household at home or to get a vaccine. Personally, I would rather get the vaccine (I also don’t have the luxury of staying home so that partly influences my choice).

Sadly, it seems like people have already made up their minds on what they want to believe, so I’m pretty sure my words will fall on deaf ears.

I stopped trying to use science and logic to convince people early on in this pandemic because it seems many have been immunized against this and have very strong anti-science and anti-logic antibody levels. With repeated exposure, they only increase their anti-science titers so that no amount of science or logic can affect them. So, instead of trying to convince you, I’ll simply repeat what I recently overheard my son say to one of his friends “You do you, I’ll do me.” Hopefully it works out well for both of us.

P.S. - You brought up the unknown “serious long term consequences” from the vaccine, which are unknown and may be nonexistent. What we ARE starting to see are the “serious long term consequences” from COVID, and they are not good. I’m concerned about what the FAA is going to require when people renew their medicals after being diagnosed with COVID because the main targets - heart, lungs and brain and kind of important for many pilots (to varying degrees, of course).


https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases...th/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351


Lindberg said:
I don't know you or Steingar, but I have (most likely) had a severe autoimmune reaction to a "safe" vaccine that landed me in the hospital (where the doctors apparently thought I might be dying of AIDS) and left me with long-term consequences for at least a year. I agree with you that the positives of safe vaccines outweigh the possible negatives, but I would never visit or take my kids to a doctor demonstrating your black-and-white attitude. The COVID death rate for kids in the US is 1:1,000,000. About the same as the death rate for the small-pox vaccine. What will be the rate of serious long-term consequences from COVID vaccines? Right now, we have no idea. When the vaccine is available, I will encourage our old folks to get it quickly. After significant use, I expect my wife and I will get it, and even later, I will plan for the kids to get it. None of us will be running out to CVS on day one, and none of us will be acting out of emotion.
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Palmpilot said:
There appears to be some doubt about what effect the vaccines will have on contagion.

https://www.fastcompany.com/9057977...ould-still-infect-the-unvaccinated-with-covid
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The Astra Zeneca trial actually swabbed their participants and the '90%' result they hinted at is in reference to virus expression, not clinical disease. With moderna and Pfizer we simply can't tell yet whether it has an influence on disease transmission. Both are publicly traded companies who are subject to FDA oversight, they have to be careful about making any claims that they cannot support by data.

Both of the mRNA vaccines may well stop transmission but until we have epidemiological data to support that (iow we see that those who caught the virus in the vaccine group were source of a lower number of secondary infections), we simply can't tell. So far, it looks like both mRNA vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe disease. If we can get everyone over 65 vaccinated with either of those vaccines, it will empty the ICUs and reduce deaths in a relatively short amount of time. Pending the other data, it may not be as helpful to use those vaccines for the young 'spreaders'.
 
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Lindberg said:
I'm not talking about the CFR, which is irrelevant since we're taking about vaccinating the whole population.
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So you are assuming that 138 million children have already caught COVID? Because at least 138 have died so far from it and no other way to get to 1:1,000,000.
 
Matthew Rogers said:
So you are assuming that 138 million children have already caught COVID? Because at least 138 have died so far from it and no other way to get to 1:1,000,000.
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Matt, I don't believe he is assuming anything and I don't see why you should either.

If you compare it to the general population in the US, then the rate is actually 1 in 2.37 million or about 138/328,000,000. If you want to make the comparison to just children, it's about 1 in 500,000. Either way it's a tiny number.

I believe the general point to his post was that covid as a cause of death in children is not a significant number.
 
The rate of complications from vaccines is laughably low, in my whole life I've heard of two, one in this thread. The rate of vaccine complications is ridiculously low compared to the rate of complications from the viruses the vaccines protect you against. For COVID that's a one in one hundred chance of dying and a one in 5 chance of experiencing prolonged disease. I'll take the vaccine, thank you. Until then I'm keeping myself away from just about everyone. My neighbor had the 'rona and got over it. I gave her a big hug yesterday. First woman I've hugged other than Mrs. Steingar since last March.

Went to train the CFI who will be training my new partner. Wasn't worried about him landing the Mooney, just the Johnson bar. Couldn't see. Glasses fogging up from the mask. Glasses came off, not the mask. (he did a really good job, by the way. Flies the damn crate better than me. did have some trouble with the Bar). If'n I don't get the 'rona from that (and there's good evidence that masks decrease the rate of viral transmission) I don't think I'm getting it.
 
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