USA Facts: Learn more about who is getting vaccinated by parsing the data by age, sex and race.
2021/12/02 DIY Protein Engineering for Education, Rationality, and Immigrant Hating Antivaxxers
Good luck, homeschoolers. Really.
2021/11/01 Here’s how many NYPD cops are on unpaid leave over vax mandate, By Craig McCarthy and Tina Moore, New York Post
New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said that 34 cops and 40 civilian civilian members of the force, less than 0.15% of the force, did not comply with Mayor de Blasio's mandate requiring that first jabs by Monday.
The NYPD’s current vaccination rate was 85 percent Monday morning, which reflects a nearly 15-point jump from the start of last week, leaving just under 8,000 uniformed and civilian members without the jab. NYPD’s Equal Employment Opportunity Division, which will review the applications for exemption, is expected to shoot down any religious exemption requests from cops who have nothing on file previously, such as requesting special accommodations for religious holidays. One source mocked the religious reasoning on some cops’ applications.
“All these guys are now giving passages from the Bible, it’s bulls–t,” the source grumbled. “We have one female who has lupus. Now that’s different. Lupus and the shot don’t mix.”
2021/11/01
2021/10/28 Is Moderna Really Better Than Pfizer—Or Is It Just a Higher Dose? By Rachel Gutman, The Atlantic
It’s possible that a good deal of the difference in the shots’ performance can be summed up with a simple phrase: More is better.
J&J, the least effective in the studies, has only one shot in its primary series; the mRNA vaccines have two. So anyone who got J&J (and hasn’t yet gotten a booster) received half as many doses total. Comparing Pfizer with Moderna, you see another dose difference: Each shot of Pfizer contains 30 micrograms of mRNA, while each one of Moderna contains 100. (Doses for children could also differ in size: Pfizer has proposed 10-microgram shots, while Moderna is going with 50.) Just how much of the difference in the shots’ performance can be summed up by saying “More vaccine is better”?
“More vaccine” is not a simple proposition. For one thing, doses of Pfizer and Moderna are measured in mass of mRNA lipid nanoparticles; J&J doses are measured by counting the number of harmless adenovirus particles that each one contains (about 50 billion). You can’t really compare lipid nanoparticles with viral particles, several experts told me. According to Michael Arand of the University of Zurich’s Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, you shouldn’t even assume that each 50-billion-particle dose of J&J will be equivalent in size to the next one, since, depending on the details of production, some particles can be more infectious than others. A better dosage measure for adenovirus-based vaccines, he argued in a recent opinion paper, would be “infectious units.” When I asked him via email whether developing a standard measure that works across different vaccine platforms might be possible, he said, “I do not think so.”
10/27/2021 Five Big Questions About COVID Vaccines for Kids, by Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic
Some good news finally—finally—appears to be on the horizon for roughly 28 million of the United States’ youngest residents. On the heels of an advisory meeting convened yesterday, the FDA is likely on the cusp of green-lighting a kid-size dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for Americans ages 5 to 11, a move that’s been months in the making.
2015/05/08 How World War II spurred vaccine innovation, by Kendall Hoyt, The Conversation
Before World War II, soldiers died more often of disease than of battle injuries. The ratio of disease-to-battle casualties was approximately 5-to-1 in the Spanish-American War and 2-to-1 in the Civil War. Improved sanitation reduced disease casualties in World War I, but it could not protect troops from the 1918 influenza pandemic. During the outbreak, flu accounted for roughly half of US military casualties in Europe.
2021/10/14 FDA vaccine advisers recommend emergency use authorization for booster dose of Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine, by Maggie Fox and Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN
All 19 members of the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee supported authorizing a 50-microgram booster dose -- half the size of the 100-microgram doses used in the primary series of the two-dose vaccine -- at least six months after the second dose, and only for certain groups: people age 65 and older; people ages 18 to 64 who are at high risk of severe Covid-19; and people ages 18 to 64 whose exposure to the coronavirus in their settings or jobs put them at risk for Covid-19 complications or severe illness.
2021/10/13 How mRNA is transforming the way we treat illnesses from flu to cancer, by Michael Le Page, NewScientist
The mRNA technique used in covid-19 vaccines recruits our bodies to make their own medicines. That could revolutionise treatments for all manner of conditions – and make personalised therapies cheaper and easier
2021/10/13
10/29/2021 Conservatives Are Giving Ron DeSantis the Trump Treatment Defend the imaginary version, ignore the real thing. By Jonathan Chait, Intelligencer / New York Magazine
On the whole, Florida’s per-capita death rate from COVID ranks seventh highest of any state. That is a raw figure that doesn’t account for factors like age. But finer-grained analyses don’t necessarily paint a more flattering picture.
Florida has had the highest per-capita death rate among the elderly of any state during the COVID surge:
Calculating coverage based on residents only finds three times more unvaccinated elderly people in Florida than according to official CDC statistics.
2021/10/08 Scientists hail historic malaria vaccine approval — but point to challenges ahead, by Amy Maxmen, Nature
Compared with other childhood vaccinations, RTS,S has only modest efficacy, preventing about 30% of severe malaria cases after a series of four injections in children under the age of five. Nevertheless, one modelling study suggests that it could prevent the deaths of 23,000 children a year, if the full series of doses were given to all kids in countries with a high incidence of malaria2 — making a significant dent in the tremendous toll of the disease, which killed 411,000 people in 2018.
10/8/2021 Heart-inflammation risk from Pfizer COVID vaccine is very low, by Smriti Mallapaty, Nature
Two studies from Israel quantify the risk of myocarditis following the Pfizer–BioNTech shot, with one suggesting the chance of developing the condition is about one in 50,000.
In one study1 of more than 5 million people who had received the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, 136 developed myocarditis reported within one month of having a Pfizer shot. Of these, 95% were mild, but one person died..
The researchers found that up to 4 in 100,000 men developed myocarditis after receiving their second dose of the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine, but the incidence for women was fewer than one in 100,000. Overall, fully vaccinated individuals were about twice as likely to be diagnosed with myocarditis as were unvaccinated individuals.
But young men aged 16–19 had a 15 in 100,000 chance of developing myocarditis after their second shot. The vast majority of these cases were mild and eventually resolved. The researchers also found that myocarditis was more likely to develop after the second vaccine dose than the first.
The other study2, of more than 2.5 million people who received the shot, identified just 54 cases of myocarditis. Balicer and his co-authors analysed data from some 2.5 million people insured by Clalit Health Services, and asked cardiologists to review hospital records. They found that 2 out of every 100,000 people who received at least one Pfizer shot developed myocarditis, and that the incidence increased to almost 11 out of 100,000 among men aged 16–29. Overall, 76% of the cases involved mild symptoms and 22% involved intermediate symptoms.
A study of US military personnel by Leslie Cooper, a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, and his colleagues, published in June, identified 23 cases of myocarditis in men aged 20–51 who had received an mRNA vaccine, working out to 8 cases per 100,000. All of the men recovered. The same month, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that it had identified 5 cases out of 100,000 in men aged 18–24, rising to 6 cases per 100,000 in male adolescents aged 12–17. Most people who developed myocarditis recovered quickly, according to the CDC.
He says the new studies clearly show that the benefits of vaccination against COVID-19 outweigh the risks of people aged 16 and older developing myocarditis. Previous research4 co-authored by Balicer found that in this age group, becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 made a person 18 times more likely to develop myocarditis — a much more significant risk than is observed following vaccination.
10/7/2021 Anti-SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain antibody evolution after mRNA vaccination, by Alice Cho, Frauke Muecksch, […]Michel C. Nussenzweig, Nature
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection produces B cell responses that continue to evolve for at least one year. During that time, memory B cells express increasingly broad and potent antibodies that are resistant to mutations found in variants of concern1. As a result, vaccination of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) convalescent individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines produces high levels of plasma neutralizing activity against all variants tested1,2. Here we examine memory B cell evolution 5 months after vaccination with either Moderna (mRNA-1273) or Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) mRNA vaccines in a cohort of SARS-CoV-2 naive individuals. Between prime and boost, memory B cells produce antibodies that evolve increased neutralizing activity, but there is no further increase in potency or breadth thereafter. Instead, memory B cells that emerge 5 months after vaccination of naive individuals express antibodies that are similar to those that dominate the initial response. While individual memory antibodies selected over time by natural infection have greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination, the overall neutralizing potency of plasma is greater following vaccination. These results suggest that boosting vaccinated individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines will increase plasma neutralizing activity but may not produce antibodies with equivalent breadth to those obtained by vaccinating convalescent individuals.
2021/10/06 A ‘Historic Event’: First Malaria Vaccine Approved by W.H.O., by Apoorva Mandavilli, The New York Times
Malaria kills about 500,000 people each year, about half of them children in Africa.
The vaccine, called Mosquirix, is not just a first for malaria — it is the first developed for any parasitic disease. Parasites are much more complex than viruses or bacteria, and the quest for a malaria vaccine has been underway for a hundred years.
10/5/2021 COVID-19 shots helped prevent thousands of senior deaths in Mich., report finds, by Karen Bouffard, The Detroit News
The studyfound that seniors were better protected from the virus when vaccination rates were high among all adults in a community.
10/1/2021 Why it’s not possible for the Covid vaccines to contain a magnetic tracking chip that connects to 5G, by Katie Schoolov, CNBC
The Covid vaccines are administered with 25- to 22-gauge needles, which have internal diameters between about 0.26 and 0.41 millimeters. Meanwhile, a chip with 5G functionality is a little smaller than a penny. The smallest radio-frequency identification, or RFID chip, is indeed small enough at 0.125 millimeters. But they only function when attached to a coil antenna that makes the single-chip system about the size of a grain of rice, which would require a syringe about 13 times larger than the one used to inject the vaccines.
9/30/2021 New York Covid shot mandate boosts vaccination rates, AFP
The percentage of nursing home staffers that have received at least one vaccine dose has gone up from 71 percent on August 24 to 92 percent as of Monday.
9/30/2021 Turns out a lot of those never-vaxxers were really ‘I’ll get it if required’, by Philip Bump, The Washington Post
9/30/2021 KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor Dashboard, Kaiser Family Foundation
9/30/2021 About a third of parents say they will vaccinate 5-to-11-year-olds ‘right away’ when eligible, report finds, by Paulina Firozi, The Washington Post
9/30/2021 AstraZeneca vaccine shows 74 percent efficacy in U.S. trial, by Adela Suliman, The Washington Post
9/30/2021 - Vaccine related articles from Chemical & Engineering News. Read 3 for free.
- Without these lipid shells, there would be no mRNA vaccines for COVID-19
- tRNA therapies could help restore proteins lost in translation
- GenEdit raises $26million to develop polymer nanoparticles
- Can Pepcid treat COVID-19
- Adenoviral vectors are the new COVID-19 vaccine front-runners. Can they overcome their checkered past?
- The tiny tweak behind COVID-19 vaccines: Fragile mRNA molecules used in COVID-19 vaccines can’t get into cells on their own. They owe their success to lipid nanoparticles that took decades to refine
9/29/2021 A man awoke to a bat on his neck and declined a vaccine. Weeks later, he died of rabies. By Caroline Anders, The Washington Post
The disease is more than 99 percent fatal once contracted. Although few people actually contract the disease, about 60,000 Americans receive the post-exposure vaccine series each year.
9/29/2021 The evidence is building: Vaccine mandates work — and well, by Aaron Blake, The Washington Post
United Airlines was one of the first big companies to adopt a mandate, and it announced this week that 98.5 percent of employees have been vaccinated. Just 593 out of 67,000 employees face being fired for refusing the vaccine.
9/29/2021 Phase 3 Safety and Efficacy of AZD1222 (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) Covid-19 Vaccine, by Ann R. Falsey, M.D., Magdalena E. Sobieszczyk, M.D., M.P.H., Ian Hirsch, Ph.D., Stephanie Sproule, M.Math., Merlin L. Robb, M.D., Lawrence Corey, M.D., Kathleen M. Neuzil, M.D., William Hahn, M.D., Julie Hunt, Ph.D., Mark J. Mulligan, M.D., Charlene McEvoy, M.D., M.P.H., Edwin DeJesus, M.D., et al., for the AstraZeneca AZD1222 Clinical Study Group*, The New England Journal of Medicine
Overall estimated vaccine efficacy was 74.0% (95% confidence interval [CI], 65.3 to 80.5; P<0.001) and estimated vaccine efficacy was 83.5% (95% CI, 54.2 to 94.1) in participants 65 years of age or older. High vaccine efficacy was consistent across a range of demographic subgroups. In the fully vaccinated analysis subgroup, no severe or critical symptomatic Covid-19 cases were observed among the 17,662 participants in the AZD1222 group; 8 cases were noted among the 8550 participants in the placebo group (<0.1%). The estimated vaccine efficacy for preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection (nucleocapsid antibody seroconversion) was 64.3% (95% CI, 56.1 to 71.0; P<0.001). SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binding and neutralizing antibodies increased after the first dose and increased further when measured 28 days after the second dose.
9/28/2021 Vaccine Data for Kids Under 5 Are Coming ‘Before the End of the Year’, by Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic
Once the results for each age cohort are collected, Pfizer will submit them to the FDA to review for safety and efficacy. The agency doesn’t work on a set timeline, but for context, emergency use of Pfizer’s vaccine took 21 days from filing to authorization for adults and 31 days for teens age 12 to 15. If that precedence holds, then kids 5 to 11 will likely be able to get shots around Halloween and those 2 to 4 will be eligible by early next year.
9/26/2021 Key Stages of the SARS-CoV-2 Life Cycle, Pfizer [more marketing than anything else]
SARS-CoV-2 proteolysis is driven by two virally encoded proteases, the 3C-like protease, 3CL (known as the main protease); and the papain-like protease.2,4 The 3CL protease cleaves the viral pp1ab polyprotein at 11 sites, while the papain-like protease cleaves at 3 sites, generating proteins critical for viral replication.2,4 Despite coronaviruses being subject to extensive mutagenesis, proteases are highly conserved among coronaviruses. SARS-CoV-2 proteases are potential targets for stopping replication.2,3,6,7
9/23/2021 Quebec swiftly passes new bill to prohibit anti-vaccine protests near schools, hospitals, by Selena Ross and Joe Lofaro, CTV News Montreal
MONTREAL -- After just a few hours of debate, Quebec's National Assembly voted unanimously Thursday evening to pass a new bill that would prohibit anti-vaccine protesters from demonstrating near schools, daycares, hospitals, as well as COVID-19 testing and vaccine sites -- an offence punishable by a fine of up to $12,000.
9/22/2021 Who Remains Unvaccinated? Unvaccinated Adults Are Younger, Less Educated, And More Republican Than Those Who Are Vaccinated, Kaiser Family Foundation COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor Dashboard
Two-thirds of adults who have not gotten a COVID-19 vaccine are under age 50, six in ten identify as Republicans or lean Republican, almost half have a high school education or less, and over a third have household incomes under $40,000. By contrast, adults who have gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine are somewhat older, more educated, have higher incomes, and are more likely to identify as Democrats or lean Democrat.
9/20/2021 India to resume exporting COVID-19 vaccines next month, by Monique Beals, The Hill
9/20/2021 Pfizer says its vaccine is safe for kids aged five to eleven, requests authorisation for use, by Michael Erman, 7 News - Australia
9/14/2021 The tangled history of mRNA vaccines, by Elie Dolgin, Nature
Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.
Although some involved in mRNA’s development, including Malone, think they deserve more recognition, others are more willing to share the limelight. “You really can’t claim credit,” says Cullis. When it comes to his lipid delivery system, for instance, “we’re talking hundreds, probably thousands of people who have been working together to make these LNP systems so that they’re actually ready for prime time.”
“Everyone just incrementally added something — including me,” says Karikó.
Looking back, many say they’re just delighted that mRNA vaccines are making a difference to humanity, and that they might have made a valuable contribution along the road. “It’s thrilling for me to see this,” says Felgner. “All of the things that we were thinking would happen back then — it’s happening now.”
9/14/2021 Howard Stern slams Joe Rogan, tells skeptics to get vaccinated or leave the country, by Christie D'Zurilla, Los Angeles Times, (via The Detroit News)
9/13/2021 Two departing FDA leaders among scientists who say Covid-19 vaccines do not currently 'show a need for boosting', by Jacqueline Howard, CNN
The scientist argue in their paper that the current Covid-19 vaccine supply could "save more lives" if used in people who are not yet vaccinated than if used as boosters. In early August, the World Health Organization called for a moratorium on booster shots until at least the end of September.
9/13/2021 Considerations in boosting COVID-19 vaccine immune responses, by Philip R Krause, MD, Prof Thomas R Fleming, PhD, Prof Richard Peto, FRS, Prof Ira M Longini, PhD, Prof J Peter Figueroa, PhD, Prof Jonathan A C Sterne, PhD, et al., The Lancet
9/10/2021 Biden Pushes Companies on Vaccine Mandates, The White House’s latest effort to tackle Covid-19 includes a mandate for businesses with over 100 employees, by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jason Karaian, Sarah Kessler, Stephen Gandel, Lauren Hirsch, Ephrat Livni and Anna Schaverien, The New York Times
8/3/2021 COVID Anti-Vaxxers Aren’t a MAGA Death Cult — It’s Worse Than That, by Tim Wise, Medium
Deathbed regrets from vaccine resisters speak volumes about the brokenness of conservatism
To them, COVID was a virus of the big city and those who live there, of old people, or persons with multiple pre-existing conditions (of which they didn’t believe their cholesterol-lined arteries and COPD qualified as examples).
It was only killing the weak.
And they were strong — cowboy strong, to be precise, or at least Sturgis motorcycle ridin’ strong.
High on a delusional mix of rugged individualism, toxic masculine bravado, pseudoscientific faith in vitamin supplements, and a belief that God would pull them through, they were convinced they were safe.
Only others were at risk — the less good people.
9/19/2021 SORRYANTIVAXXER.COM
9/16/2021 Uncoupling vaccination from politics: a call to action, by Sharfstein, Callaghan, Carpiano, Sgaier, Brewer, Galvani, et al, The Lancet
9/16/2021 GOP Group That Fights Against Vaccine Mandates And For Election Integrity Might Miss Campaign Filing Deadline After Bookkeeper Dies From Covid, by Zach Everson, Forbes
9/15/2021 A Michigan doctor goes to Facebook over dying, unvaccinated COVID patients, by Robin Erb, BridgeMI
And with a click of a button, Trunsky — a specialist in pulmonology, critical care and hospice and palliative care — joined the growing ranks of U.S. health care workers who are publicly venting their exasperation with the unvaccinated, who comprise the vast majority of COVID patients in hospital emergency rooms and ICU’s.
“They’ve screwed up. They didn’t get vaccinated,” Trunsky told Bridge Michigan in an interview about his Facebook post. “And now they’re begging for care.”
9/8/2021 Vermont State troopers accused of making fake vaccination cards resign after colleagues turn them in, by Timothy Bella and Andrew Jeong, The Washington Post
Arrests have been made in recent months of homeopathic doctors, bar owners, pharmacists and others accused of selling fake cards. The Manhattan district attorney announced last week that the person behind the “AntiVaxMomma” Instagram account — Jasmine Clifford, 31, of Lyndhurst, N.J. — has been charged with selling hundreds of fake vaccination cards. Clifford advertised fake cards on social media for $200 apiece featuring “real serial [numbers]” and available to “be mailed to any state” — some of which allegedly went to front-line workers.
“Some people, rather than get the vaccine, which is free, are paying money for a fake card and risking prosecution because it’s against the law,” he said at an August news conference. “Who could be that dumb?” - Senator Chuck Shumar
9/3/2021 CDC: US states with high vaccination rates protecting children from hospitalization, Associated Press
Cases, emergency room visits and hospitalizations are much lower among children in communities with higher vaccination rates," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday at a White House briefing. In August, the hospitalization rate among children was nearly four times higher in states with the lowest vaccine coverage compared to states with high coverage. Citing a second study, Walensky said the hospitalization rate in unvaccinated adolescents was nearly 10 times higher in July than among fully vaccinated adolescents.
9/2/2021 India’s DNA COVID vaccine is a world first – more are coming, by Smriti Mallapaty, Nature
The ZyCoV-D vaccine heralds a wave of DNA vaccines for various diseases that are undergoing clinical trials around the world.
9/1/2021 Coronavirus California: Bay Area business group recommends wider workplace vaccine requirements, by Amanda del Castillo, ABC7 News San Francisco
9/1/2021 Opinion: The keys to ending anti-vaccine madness: Fear and the law, by Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post
9/1/2021 Covid vaccines remain ‘stunningly effective,’ even as Delta concerns grow, by Chloe Taylor, CNBC
A piece of research funded by Pfizer, published in July, showed that the efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was strongest between one week and two months after receiving the second dose, coming in at 96.2%. It then, however, declined by an average of 6% every two months. Four to six months after a second dose, its effectiveness fell to around 84%.
9/1/2021 An Instagram user who went by ‘AntiVaxMomma’ sold hundreds of fake covid vaccine cards, prosecutors say, by Julian Mark, The Washington Post
Nadayza Barkley, 27, was also charged in the alleged conspiracy. Prosecutors allege Barkley entered at least 10 people who bought the cards into the New York State Immunization Information System database.
8/30/2021 CDC advisory panel unanimously recommends Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine for those 16 and older, by Frances Stead Sellers, The Washington Post
Since Dec. 14, more than 369 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered in the United States — with 210 million of those being Pfizer-BioNTech, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
8/30/2021 Pfizer booster shot protects against coronavirus infection and severe disease, Israeli scientists report, by Lenny Bernstein, The Washington Post
Researchers at a variety of Israeli institutions looked at data from the nation’s Health Ministry for 1.1 million people 60 or older this month. They concluded that the shots significantly helped in blocking infection from the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus as well as severe forms of the disease. They said the improvement kicked in about 12 days after the booster was administered.
8/30/2021 Study finds vaccine booster shots effective as WHO Europe head says they’re ‘not a luxury’, The Washington Post
August 2021 Vaccine Refusers Don’t Get to Dictate Terms Anymore, by Juliette Kayyem, The Atlantic
People who opt out of shots shouldn’t expect their employers, health insurers, and fellow citizens to accommodate them. Getting a shot to protect yourself and others from COVID-19 is both a social responsibility and the best way to hasten the end of the pandemic, and if you don’t believe that, we’re not waiting around for you to step up.
I know, I know: I should try harder to understand the feelings of unvaccinated Americans. Being more patient and empathetic would make me sound nicer. But do you know what’s really nice? Going back to school safely. Traveling without feeling vulnerable. Seeing a nation come back to life.
8/29/2021
Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905)
AntiVaxxing: The Background of Jacobson v. Massachusetts (ThreadUnrolled)
4/2/2020 Onesimus: The Slave Who Helped Boston Battle Smallpox, by Lashyra Nolen, Undark
8/29/2021
8/29/2021
by Bill Comeau @Billius27 August 28, 2021
NEW - major Lancet study: Delta is not just much more transmissible, it is much more severe.
In above findings, HR = Hazard ratio.
That's the probability of a treatment event (like Delta variant hospitalization)
compared to the probability in a control group (like Alpha variant hospitalization).
8/28/2021
Confused and confusing
8/28/2021
by William Ku, Ph.D.
"#COVID19 continues its resurgence since 9 days after.reedom Day".
3.2k Brits will die over the next 4 weeks. This study suggests more
cases and hospitalizations as schools continue to reopen."
8/27/2021
8/27/2021 Opinion: The confusion surrounding booster shots could paralyze vaccination efforts. The government must step up. by Kavita Patel M.D., The Washington Post
Clinicians across the country are managing three outbreaks simultaneously. The first, of course, is the surge in covid-19 cases due to more transmissible variants. The second is rapidly spreading lies and misinformation about vaccines on social media. And the third outbreak has emerged only recently: The chaos and confusion surrounding the administration of booster shots.
8/25/2021 Moderna completes submission for full FDA approval of COVID vaccine, by Jamie Gumbrecht and Jen Christensen, CNN
8/25/2021 Pfizer: PFIZER AND BIONTECH INITIATE ROLLING SUBMISSION OF SUPPLEMENTAL BIOLOGICS LICENSE APPLICATION TO U.S. FDA FOR BOOSTER DOSE OF COMIRNATY® IN INDIVIDUALS 16 AND OLDER
8/20/2021 Why America’s Largest Teachers’ Union Refuses to Support Vaccine Mandates, by Emma Green, The Atlantic
8/16/2021 Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, a Covid-19 vaccination critic, is hospitalized and on a ventilator, by Jennifer Henderson and Polo Sandoval, CNN
8/12/2021 The Vaccine Scientist Spreading Vaccine Misinformation, by Tom Bartlett, The Atlantic
Robert Malone claims to have invented mRNA technology. Why is he trying so hard to undermine its use?
7/27/2021 San Francisco bars saw a ‘surge’ of breakthrough covid cases. Now they’re requiring vaccine cards to enter. By Julian Mark, The Washington Post
7/12/2021 ‘Potentially a death sentence’: White House goes off on vaccine fearmongers, by Natasha Korecki and Eugene Daniels, Politico
The White House is adopting a more aggressive political posture to hit back harder on misinformation and scare tactics after Republican lawmakers and conservative activists pledged to fight the administration’s stated plans to go “door-to-door” to increase vaccination rates. The Biden administration is casting conservative opponents of its Covid-19 vaccine campaign as dangerous and extreme.
A cell infected with particles (yellow; artificially coloured) of the SARS-CoV-2 variant called B.1.1.7
Credit: National Institutes of Health/Science Photo Library
5/24/2021 What scientists know about new, fast-spreading coronavirus variants, by David Adam
Key questions remain about how quickly B.1.617 variants can spread, their potential to evade immunity and how they might affect the course of the pandemic.
5/5/2021 COVID research: a year of scientific milestones, Nature
4/26/2021 The Biden administration is expected to share AstraZeneca doses with other nations after a safety review, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David E Sanger, The New York Times
AstraZeneca’s vaccine, unlike those of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, has not been granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration. And the administration would not specify which countries will receive the vaccine.
Mr. Biden, who has already released a total of 4 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada and Mexico, said last week that he was considering sending more overseas: “We’re looking at what is going to be done with some of the vaccines that we are not using,” the president said. “We’ve got to make sure they are safe to be sent.”
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, cautioned at a news conference that the donations of doses would not happen right away. She said about 10 million doses could be released “in the coming weeks” if the F.D.A. determines that the vaccine meets “our own bar and our own guidelines,” and that another 50 million doses are in various stages of production.
“Right now we have zero doses available of AstraZeneca,” Ms. Psaki said.
4/26/2021 Breathless headlines about 8% of Americans "skipping" their second doses aside, by Jeff Linder.
...it's actually pretty amazing, especially given that Americans pretty regularly get about HALF of recommended medical services.
12/2016 The Quality of Outpatient Care Delivered to Adults in the United States, 2002 to 2013, by David M. Levine, MD, JAMA Internal Medicine
4/25/2021 Millions Are Skipping Their Second Doses of Covid Vaccines, by Rebecca Robbins, The New York Times
Nearly 8 percent of those who got initial Pfizer or Moderna shots missed their second doses. State officials want to prevent the numbers from rising.
4/20/2021 Opinion: The covid-19 vaccines are an extraordinary success story. The media should tell it that way, by Leana S. Wen, M.D., The Washington Post
“So far, 5,800 fully vaccinated people have caught Covid anyway in the US, CDC says,” read one headline. “CDC reports 5,800 COVID-19 infections, 74 deaths in fully vaccinated people,” said another.
By themselves, the numbers sound concerning. But let’s take a closer look. An infection rate of 5,800 infections out of 77 million fully vaccinated people is less than 0.008 percent — a remarkably low rate. Compare this with 68,000 daily new infections in the United States — which, over a 30-day period, is nearly 100 times higher than the infection rate for those vaccinated. Put another way: A total of 5,800 infections among the inoculated is orders of magnitude better than 68,000 infections per day in the general population.
4/20/2021 Virginia Uses Emergency Alert System to Notify of Coronavirus Vaccine Availability, by Gregory S. Schneider and Erin Cox, The Washington Post
Virginia officials startled some residents Monday by using the wireless emergency alert system to send out notice that coronavirus vaccines are now available to everyone over age 16.
4/20/2021 ‘I’m still a zero’: Vaccine-resistant Republicans warn that their skepticism is worsening, by Dan Diamond, The Washington Post
Many vaccine-hesitant Americans are increasingly entrenched in their decisions to resist the shots, said Frank Luntz, a longtime GOP communications expert who convened Sunday’s focus group over Zoom. Unlike a similar focus group five weeks ago, when most participants told Luntz and Frieden that the session persuaded them to get shots, attendees Sunday said they were swayed only moderately by doctors’ urging — or not moved at all.
“The further we go into the vaccination process, the more passionate the hesitancy is,” Luntz said after the session. “If you’ve refused to take the vaccine this long, it’s going to be hard to switch you.”
4/19/2021 The race to untangle the secrets of rare, severe blood clots after Johnson & Johnson vaccination, by Carolyn Y. Johnson, The Washington Post
A protein found inside platelets that also coated the surface of arteries and veins, called platelet factor 4, could bind strongly to heparin, forming a two-part complex. In some people, when heparin and the protein bonded, the body’s disease-fighting system went on alert, triggering antibodies against platelet factor 4. The antibodies could activate platelets, but with seemingly contradictory consequences: Some platelets would clot, while others would vanish. The antibodies could damage the cells lining blood vessels, helping trigger clots in more ways than one. It appears that something in the vaccine bound to platelet factor 4 and triggered a similar response.
“Just as an occasional patient zings off one of these huge responses after being given heparin and gets in trouble, the occasional person given these vaccines loses the regulatory control that keeps this immune response and zings off one of these high-titer antibody responses,” In five of the six U.S. patients who developed clots after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, physicians performed tests and found those same HIT antibodies. A 25-year-old man who received the vaccine in the clinical trial of the vaccine and suffered a brain clot also had HIT antibodies. The existence of those tests — and the ability to treat the condition — is a tribute to the years of experience studying HIT.
4/18/2021 Drones are delivering COVID-19 vaccines in Africa through ‘highways in the sky’, by Emmett Smith, Mashable
4/16/2021 Biden admin hunts for clues to J&J blood-clot mystery, by Erin Banco, Dan Goldberg, Rachel Roubein and Sarah Owermohle, Politico
The data gap may not be fully resolved by next Friday, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel is set to gather for the second time to discuss the concerns about the shot
4/16/2021 The Blood-Clot Problem Is Multiplying, by Roxanne Khamsi, The Atlantic
The world is now engaged in a vaccination program unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes, and with it, unprecedented scrutiny of ultra-rare but dangerous side effects. An estimated 852 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered across 154 countries, according to data collected by Bloomberg. Last week, the European Medicines Agency, which regulates medicines in the European Union, concluded that the unusual clotting events were indeed a side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine; by that point, more than 220 cases of dangerous blood abnormalities had been identified. Only half a dozen cases have been documented so far among Americans vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and a causal link has not yet been established. But the latest news suggests that the scope of this problem might be changing.
4/16/2021 The Danger of a ‘Dudes Only’ Vaccine, by Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic
The Johnson & Johnson shot is teetering on the precipice of becoming America’s “dudes only” vaccine.
4/15/2021 COVID-19 Vaccines Are Entering Uncharted Immune Territory, by Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic
A transplant infectious-disease physician at the University of Pittsburgh, told me that his team did not detect antibodies in about 46 percent of blood-cancer patients who had received both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Two studies out of Johns Hopkins University found no evidence of antibodies in 26 percent of people with rheumatic or musculoskeletal disease (a group that includes rheumatoid arthritis and lupus), and 83 percent of organ-transplant recipients, after their first dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
For now, immunocompromised people will have to rely on those who can confidently derive protection from vaccines, such as household members, health-care providers, and other close contacts. That puts some of the onus on the rest of the world: “Every vaccine that goes into an arm is protection for these people,” Longbrake, of Yale, said.
4/14/2021 Livingston County COVID-19 vaccine tracker: 19% people fully vaccinated, by Chastity Laskey, Livingston Daily/ USA TODAY NETWORK
The five counties with the highest percentage of their population fully vaccinated in Michigan as of April 12 are Leelanau County (35%), Emmet County (32%), Grand Traverse County (31%), Schoolcraft County (30%) and Ontonagon County (30%).
4/14/2021 The Rural Pandemic Isn’t Ending, by Elaine Godfrey, The Atlantic
Rural Americans are twice as likely as people in urban areas to say they will “definitely not” get a shot, and nearly three-quarters of them identify as Republican or Republican-leaning, according to new survey data from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Rural Americans are more apt to see vaccination as a civil-liberties issue: “More (58%) rural residents view getting vaccinated as a personal choice rather than part of everyone’s responsibility to protect the health of others (42%),” the KFF survey found. (The reverse is true for urban residents.) This group is also much more likely than any other to say that the news media have exaggerated the pandemic’s seriousness, Liz Hamel, who directs KFF’s polling work, told me.
4/14/2021 CDC vaccine panel considers limiting J&J shot by age or sex, by Sarah Owermohle and Erin Banco, Politico
Officials stressed that these clots are of concern in part because the typical treatment for clotting — the blood thinner heparin — can make them worse.
4/14/2021 The mRNA Vaccines Are Looking Better and Better, by Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic
The blood-clot events with the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines are so rare—appearing in one in 100,000 to one in 1 million vaccine recipients—that they would not have shown up in clinical trials, even ones conducted within more leisurely, non-pandemic timelines. (The COVID-19 vaccine trials, which generally included tens of thousands of participants each, were actually unusually large because researchers wanted data as quickly as possible.) “It’s true with all new medications of any sort. You only find rare events when things are rolled out to very vast numbers of people,” says John Grabenstein, the associate director of scientific communication for the Immunization Action Coalition, who used to work on vaccines for the pharmaceutical giant Merck. “One-in-a-million events are just barely measurable.” That faint signal is especially difficult to see against a noisy background: Some people get blood clots for reasons unrelated to the vaccine, too.
Some scientists now hypothesize that the immune reaction is triggered by some part of the adenovirus-vector technology. If that’s true, these blood clots might show up as a rare side effect with other adenovirus-vector vaccines. But they clearly are very infrequent. The AstraZeneca and J&J coronavirus vaccines are the first adenovirus-vector shots to even be deployed widely enough in the U.S. and Europe for such rare events to emerge, but vaccines including Russia’s Sputnik V, China’s CanSino, and J&J’s Ebola vaccine also use the technology.
4/11/2021 Why covid arm and other post-vaccine rashes might actually be a ‘good thing’, by Marlene Cimons, The Washington Post
She thought the rash could be a side effect of the vaccine — in her case Moderna — and worried she wouldn’t be able to get her second dose.
“That was my biggest fear,” she says. “I wanted to be able to get it. I was more anxious about not getting it, than I was about the reaction itself.”
4/10/2021 Vaccines won’t be enough. New Covid variants have changed the game, by Susan Michie, et al, The Print
4/8/2021 Colorado vaccination site shuts down early after 11 people have 'expected' adverse reactions to the Covid-19 vaccine, officials say, by Rebekah Riess, Joe Sutton and Scottie Andrew, CNN
More than 1,700 people received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Wednesday at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, a soccer stadium where the state of Colorado and health care provider Centura Health operate a mass vaccination site. The 11 people reported feeling nauseous and dizzy after they were vaccinated, Colorado health officials said.
4/6/2021 Among 1.7 million fully vaccinated Michiganders, state identifies small number of COVID-19 infections and deaths, by Samuel Dodge, MLive.com
There are 246 fully-vaccinated Michiganders that tested positive for COVID-19, as well as three that died according to numbers from the state health department. These cases account for just .0001% of the 1.7 million Michigan residents that received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as of March 30. The three patients that died were all age 65 or older.
The very small percentage of infections from fully vaccinated people falls well within the expected protectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which provide 95% and 94% efficacy respectively. Health experts told MLive that 95% effectiveness means that if 1,000 people are fully vaccinated, you can expect around 50 infections among that group.
4/6/2021 Clear link between AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots in brain, EMA official tells paper
“In my opinion we can now say it, it is clear that there is an association with the vaccine. However, we still do not know what causes this reaction,” Marco Cavaleri, chair of the vaccine evaluation team at the EMA, told Italian daily Il Messaggero when asked about the possible relation between the AstraZeneca shot and cases of brain blood clots. The regulator has consistently said the benefits outweigh the risks as it investigates 44 reports of an extremely rare brain clotting ailment known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) out of 9.2 million people in the European Economic Area who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine.
4/6/2021 Biden Speeds It Up: All Adults Will Be Eligible for Vaccine by April 19, by Jamie Ross, Daily Beast
Last month, President Joe Biden promised America that every adult would be eligible for their first coronavirus vaccine by May 1. According to CNN, he’s now chopping two weeks off that deadline.
4/5/2021 Demography 101: What is Life Expectancy? and, even more important, What it Isn't, by Ilya Kashnitsky, PhD
4/5/2021 The Story of One Dose, by Jeff Wise, Intelligencer
As an object, it’s not much: an inch and a half of glass with a stopper and some liquid inside. But a thimbleful of the stuff has amazing power — the ability to liberate us from our yearlong collective trauma. The fact that it’s available, scarcely a year after the start of a pandemic, is both an industrial miracle and a freakish stroke of luck; a decade ago, technology did not exist that could bring vaccines so quickly to the public’s arms.
The story of the vaccine’s path from development to mass distribution is a lesson in the power of the global capitalist system — the network of corporations and supply chains that, though it can suffocate and disempower us as individuals, can also summon forth immense material and intellectual resources and deploy them for the greater good.
To turn the original virus into a harmless vaccine, researchers had deleted genes the virus needs for replication; in order to make copies of itself, the Ad26.COV2.S vector required a special environment. The solution was to insert the virus’s missing genes into a unique human-cell line that had originated in the eye of a human fetus aborted in the mid-1980s. This genetically modified cell line was named PER.C6. Unlike normal human cells, which can multiply only so many times before dying, these cells are immortal; as long as they’re fed the right nutrients and kept at the right temperature, they can grow forever. Because PER.C6 contained the genes that Ad26 needed to reproduce, it held the key to growing the viral vectors.
The nurse chooses a needle based on the heft of your arm — an inch and a half for larger people, an inch otherwise — and pushes the tip into the rubber gasket atop the vial containing your dose. She slips the needle into your muscle. Inside your arm, 50 billion genetically engineered nanoscale robot assassins, carrying genetic payloads downloaded from the internet and bred in a soup of immortal human-eye cells, begin prying their way through your cells’ defenses.
4/5/2021 His Patient Refused the Vaccine. She Died of COVID in the ICU, by Michael Daly, Daily Beast
As he drove past reopened churches on Sunday, critical care nurse John Haacke figured Easter will prove to be yet another holiday followed by a surge in COVID-19.
“Things are picking up again. It seems like it won’t stop.” he said. “I have two sets of husbands and wives that died in the last week and a half, right in beds next to each other. I think in both families, the children infected them.”
None of the patients had been vaccinated. They either had not yet been able to get a shot or they had declined the opportunity. One clerical worker in her 50s had been given the chance but refused and ended up in the ICU with COVID-19.
The woman’s chest x-ray looked like a white sheet of paper, something increasingly common among recent patients.
“The worst chest x-rays I’ve ever seen in my life,” Haacke said. “Some of these x-rays, with an untrained eye you wouldn’t know there’s a lung that exists in there.”
The ICU team decided the woman’s best chance was extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), where a machine pumps and oxygenates the blood outside the body.
“We tried to send her out Friday to put her on ECMO, but they didn’t have any beds available,” Haacke said. “It’s been that way.”
4/4/2021 Las goticas milagrosas del doctor Maduro, por Alberto Barrera Tyszka, The New York Rimes
¿Por qué precisamente ahora, en la peor circunstancia, el chavismo rechaza vacunas? Porque su lógica es otra, porque su prioridad no son las víctimas, porque sus acciones no están destinadas a atender la emergencia sino —más bien— a aprovecharla en función de sus objetivos, de su plan de acumulación y permanencia en el poder.
You can hit the google translate button to read this in English, but it loses a little bite.
4/3/2021
4/3/2021 U.S. Taps Johnson & Johnson to Run Emergent's Troubled Vaccine Plant, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Saturday put Johnson & Johnson in charge of a troubled Baltimore manufacturing plant that ruined 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine and moved to stop the plant from making another vaccine by AstraZeneca, senior federal health officials said.
The extraordinary move by the Department of Health and Human Services came just days after officials had learned that Emergent BioSolutions, a contract manufacturer that has been making both the Johnson & Johnson and the AstraZeneca vaccines, mixed up ingredients from the two, which led regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines.
The Department of Health and Human Services directed Johnson & Johnson to install a new leadership team to oversee all aspects of production and manufacturing at the Emergent Baltimore plant.
The ingredient mix-up, and Saturday’s move by the administration, is a significant setback and a public relations debacle for Emergent, a Maryland-based biotech company that has built a profitable business by teaming up with the federal government, primarily by selling its anthrax vaccines to the Strategic National Stockpile.
Emergent’s Baltimore plant is one of two that are federally designated as “Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing” and were built with taxpayer support. Last June, the government paid Emergent $628 million to reserve space there as part of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s fast-track initiative to develop coronavirus vaccines.
Last month, Mr. Biden canceled a visit to Emergent’s Baltimore plant, and his spokeswoman announced that the administration would conduct an audit of the Strategic National Stockpile, the nation’s emergency medical reserve. Both actions came after a New York Times investigation into how the company had gained outsize influence over the repository.
3/8/2021 Biden Cancels Visit to Vaccine Maker After Times Report on Its Tactics, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Chris Hamby, The New York Times
Decisions about how to spend the repository’s limited budget are supposed to be based on careful assessments by government officials of how best to save lives, but The Times found that they were largely driven by the demands and financial interests of a handful of biotech companies that have specialized in products that address terrorist threats rather than infectious disease.
Chief among them is Emergent. Throughout most of the past decade, the government has spent nearly half of the stockpile’s half-billion-dollar annual budget on Emergent’s anthrax vaccines, The Times found.
In the competition for funding, products for pandemic preparedness — including N95s — repeatedly lost out, according to the Times investigation, which relied on more than 40,000 pages of documents and interviews with more than 60 people with inside knowledge of the stockpile.
The image of some health care workers wearing trash bags for personal protection has become an enduring symbol of the government’s failed response. Yet the government paid Emergent $626 million in 2020 for products that included vaccines to protect against a terrorist attack using anthrax.
For much of Emergent’s two-decade history, its primary product has been an anthrax vaccine, first licensed in 1970, that the company purchased in 1998 from the State of Michigan. Over time, the price per dose that the government agreed to pay Emergent increased nearly sixfold, accounting for inflation.
3/6/2021 A Who’s Who of Revolving-Door Influence at Emergent BioSolutions, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Chris Hamby, The New York Times
As in previous years, Emergent’s biggest single source of revenue in 2020 was products for the Strategic National Stockpile, the country’s emergency medical reserve, which was woefully ill prepared for the pandemic. Even with the country focused on Covid-19, the government last year paid Emergent $626 million for products that included anthrax and smallpox vaccines.
3/31/2021 Up to 15M Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine doses ruined due to human error: NYT, by Eric Sagonowsky, Fierce Pharma
The manufacturing issues at J&J and AstraZeneca underscore the impressive production efforts underway at mRNA players Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. CDC data show 98 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses have been delivered to states, while 90 million Moderna doses have been sent. Moderna this week said it shipped its 100 millionth dose to the government.
3/31/2021 Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is delayed by a U.S. factory mixup, by Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weiland, The New York Times
The mistake is a major embarrassment both for Johnson & Johnson, whose one-dose vaccine has been credited with speeding up the national immunization program, and for Emergent, its subcontractor, which has faced fierce criticism for its heavy lobbying for federal contracts, especially for the government’s emergency health stockpile.
3/8/2021 How One Firm Put an ‘Extraordinary Burden’ on the U.S.’s Troubled Stockpile, by Chris Hamby and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times
- The shortage of lifesaving medical equipment last year was a searing example of the government’s failed coronavirus response.
- Explanations about what went wrong devolved into partisan finger pointing, with Mr. Trump blaming the Obama administration for leaving the cupboard bare, and Democrats in Congress accusing Mr. Trump of negligence.
- An investigation by The New York Times found a hidden explanation: Government purchases for the Strategic National Stockpile, the country’s emergency medical reserve where such equipment is kept, have largely been driven by the demands and financial interests of a handful of biotech firms that have specialized in products that address terrorist threats rather than infectious disease.
4/1/2021 Biden Administration Announces Ad Campaign to Combat Vaccine Hesitancy, by Annie Karni, The New York Times
A new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week found that the number of Black adults willing to be vaccinated had increased substantially since February. But 13 percent of respondents over all said that they would “definitely not” get a vaccine. Among Republicans and white evangelical Christians, almost 30 percent of each group said that they would “definitely not” get a shot.
“I’ve got some pockets where they cite religious reasons with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine,” said Shirley Bloomfield, the chief executive of N.T.C.A. — The Rural Broadband Association, who has been sharing with the White House what she hears from her group’s members. “There are a lot of pockets where people have already had Covid and a sense of, ‘Well, we’ve all already gotten it, so we’re not really pressed.’”
3/29.2021 Interim Estimates of Vaccine Effectiveness of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 COVID-19 Vaccines in Preventing SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Health Care Personnel, First Responders, and Other Essential and Frontline Workers — Eight U.S. Locations, December 2020–March 2021, by Mark G. Thompson, PhD; Jefferey L. Burgess, MD; Allison L. Naleway, PhD; Harmony L. Tyner, MD; Sarang K. Yoon, DO; Jennifer Meece, PhD; Lauren E.W. Olsho, PhD; Alberto J. Caban-Martinez, DO; Ashley Fowlkes, ScD; Karen Lutrick, PhD; Jennifer L. Kuntz, PhD; Kayan Dunnigan, MPH; Marilyn J. Odean, MS; Kurt T. Hegmann, MD; Elisha Stefanski; Laura J. Edwards, MPH; Natasha Schaefer-Solle, PhD; Lauren Grant, MS; Katherine Ellingson, PhD; Holly C. Groom, MPH; Tnelda Zunie; Matthew S. Thiese, PhD; Lynn Ivacic; Meredith G. Wesley, MPH; Julie Mayo Lamberte, MSPH; Xiaoxiao Sun, PhD; Michael E. Smith; Andrew L. Phillips, MD; Kimberly D. Groover, PhD; Young M. Yoo, MSPH; Joe Gerald, MD; Rachel T. Brown, PhD; Meghan K. Herring, MPH; Gregory Joseph, MPH; Shawn Beitel, MSc; Tyler C. Morrill, MS; Josephine Mak, MPH; Patrick Rivers, MPP; Katherine M. Harris, PhD; Danielle R. Hunt, PhD; Melissa L. Arvay, PhD; Preeta Kutty, MD; Alicia M. Fry, MD; Manjusha Gaglani, MBBS, MMWR, CDC
Under real-world conditions, mRNA vaccine effectiveness of full immunization (≥14 days after second dose) was 90% against SARS-CoV-2 infections regardless of symptom status; vaccine effectiveness of partial immunization (≥14 days after first dose but before second dose) was 80%.
3/29/2021 How mRNA Technology Could Change the World, by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic
More than 40 years had passed between the 1970s, when a Hungarian scientist pioneered early mRNA research, and the day the first authorized mRNA vaccine was administered in the United States, on December 14, 2020. In the interim, the idea’s long road to viability nearly destroyed several careers and almost bankrupted several companies.
3/29/2021 Scientists figured out the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine's code and posted it on Github, by Matt Binder, Mashable
As Motherboard mentions, COVID-19 vaccines have been reverse-engineered before. In late 2020, the founder of PowerDNS, an open source software provider, was able to figure out the mRNA sequence of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine using only information that was available online.
3/29/2021 Stanford Scientists Reverse Engineer Moderna Vaccine, Post Code on Github, by Matthew Gault, Motherboard
The Pfizer/BioNTech data [Figure 1] verified the reported sequence for that vaccine
(https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/), while
the Moderna sequence [Figure 2] could not be checked against a published reference.
3/23/2021 Assemblies-of-putative-SARS-CoV2-spike-encoding-mRNA-sequences-for-vaccines-BNT-162b2-and-mRNA-1273, GitHub
by
- Dae Eun Jeong,
- Matthew McCoy,
- Karen Artiles,
- Orkan Ilbay,
- Andrew Fire*,
- Kari Nadeau,
- Helen Park,
- Brooke Betts,
- Scott Boyd,
- Ramona Hoh, and
- Massa Shoura*,
Departments of Pathology, Genetics, Pediatrics, and Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Medical Center, Github
3/25/2021 12 people are behind most of the anti-vaxxer disinformation you see on social media, by Matt Binder, Mashable
Health misinformation was a huge problem in 2020 amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, more than 59 million people were reached on social media platforms at the end of last year by the 425 anti-vaxxer accounts which the organization tracks.
3/22/2021 Israeli company claims oral COVID-19 vaccine on its way, By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN, The Jerusalem Post
Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc., a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company based on technology developed by Hadassah-University Medical Center, announced over the weekend a joint venture with India-based Premas Biotech to develop a novel oral vaccine. Together they formed the company Oravax Medical Inc. The vaccine is based on Oramed’s “POD” oral delivery technology and Premas’s vaccine technology.
The new Oravax vaccine candidate targets three structural proteins of the novel coronavirus, as opposed to the single spike protein targeted via the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, Kidron said. As such, this vaccine should be much more resistant to COVID-19 variants.
Oramed’s technology can be used to orally administer a number of protein-based therapies, which would otherwise be delivered by injection. Oramed is in the midst of a Phase III clinical trial through the US Food and Drug Administration of an oral insulin capsule for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
3/18/2021 Understanding and Explaining mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines, CDC
Beyond vaccines, numerous preclinical and clinical studies have used mRNA to encode cancer antigens to stimulate immune responses targeted at clearing or reducing malignant tumors.
3/16/2021 The Disinformation Dozen, Center for Countering Digital Hate
Tracking of 425 anti-vaccine accounts by CCDH shows that their total following across platforms now stands at 59.2 million as a result of these failures.
The 20 anti-vaxxers with the largest followings account for over two-thirds of this total.
The Disinformation Dozen account for up to 73% of Facebook’s anti-vaxx content.
Threadreader version, rolled up and readable in a browser
3/16/2021
3/15/2021 As Biden Confronts Vaccine Hesitancy, Republicans Are a Particular Challenge, by Annie Karni and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, The New York Times
While there are degrees of opposition to vaccination for the coronavirus among a number of groups, including African-Americans and antivaccine activists, polling suggests that opinions in this case are breaking substantially along partisan lines.
A third of Republicans said in a CBS News poll that they would not be vaccinated — compared with 10 percent of Democrats — and another 20 percent of Republicans said they were unsure.
Widespread opposition to vaccination, if not overcome, could slow the United States from reaching the point where the virus can no longer spread easily, setting back efforts to get the economy humming again and people back to a more normal life.
But many conservative and rural voters continue to point to a variety of worries. Some conservatives harbor religious concerns about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which uses abortion-derived fetal cell lines.
3/5/2021 Americans are increasingly willing to get vaccinated, according to a new survey, by Ruth Graham, The New York Times
The proportion of adults in the country who intend to get vaccinated has increased significantly over the last several months, according to a survey released Friday by the Pew Research Center. Sixty-nine percent of the public now plans to get vaccinated — or already has — up from 60 percent who said in November that they intended to pursue it.
The issue has become more partisan over time, however. The new survey finds a 27-percentage point political gap, with 83 percent of Democrats saying they plan to get the vaccine or have already received it, compared to just 56 percent of Republicans.
2/18/2021 Delay a Shot? Skip One? Vaccine-Dosing Messaging Is a Nightmare, by Katherine Wu, The Atlantic
Vaccine regimens need both science and public trust to succeed.
2/8/2021 A Few Covid Vaccine Recipients Developed a Rare Blood Disorder, by Denise Grady, The New York Times
One day after receiving her first dose of Moderna’s Covid vaccine, Luz Legaspi, 72, woke up with bruises on her arms and legs, and blisters that bled inside her mouth. Ms. Legaspi was strong and in good health before receiving the Moderna vaccine. But when she was admitted to the city hospital in Elmhurst, Queens, her platelet count was zero. Normal readings range from 150,000 to 450,000, and anything under 10,000 is considered very dangerous and in urgent need of treatment. It is not known whether this blood disorder is related to the Covid vaccines.
1/26/2021 Luck, foresight and science: How an unheralded team developed a COVID-19 vaccine in record time, by David Heath and Gus Garcia-Roberts, USA Today
EXPERTS KNEW there had never been a vaccine created in less than four years. That was for the mumps, and even that vaccine was an outlier. “I think the goal of 18 months is one that will be very, very difficult to achieve,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said in the early months. “But it just may be our moon shot.”
1/12/2021 How COVID unlocked the power of RNA vaccines, by Elie Dolgin, Nature
RNA vaccines seem built for speed. From the genetic sequence of a pathogen, researchers can quickly pull out a potential antigen-encoding segment, insert that sequence in a DNA template and then synthesize the corresponding RNA before packaging the vaccine for delivery into the body.
Moderna, for example, managed this within 4 days of receiving the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence. It focused on the virus’s spike protein, a surface protein used to enter cells. Collaborating with the US National Institutes of Health, the company then ran proof-of-concept experiments in mice before kicking off first-in-human testing in a span of just two months.
1/10/2021 Exploring the Supply Chain of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, by Jonas Neubert
I’ll start with the bad news: Nobody will be making an mRNA vaccine in their garage any time soon.
Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna each have two largely independent supply chains in Europe and the United States. This makes sense in order to maximize utilization of available manufacturing capacity and to add resilience through redundancy. Bloomberg’s Supply Lines newsletter points out that it also appeases certain “protectionist governments intent on hobbling international cooperation by exerting sovereignty over supply chains”. In fact, “America exports virtually nothing out of its borders” (says German chancellor Merkel)12 and supply agreements with manufacturers specifically prohibit sending vaccine from Europe to the US, for example Moderna’s contract with Lonza.
Following the active ingredient from beginning (DNA synthesis) to end (fill-and-finish into vials) takes on the order of weeks. For example, Moderna’s first ever batch of the COVID-19 vaccine was sent off to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for phase 1 clinical trials 42 days after the design of the vaccine was completed.14 (The final 14 of those 42 days were spent waiting for the fixed-length sterility test experiment to complete.)
A note about the relationship between BioNTech and Pfizer: BioNTech is the original developer of several COVID-19 vaccine candidates. In March 2020, BioNTech announced a collaboration with Pfizer that involves jointly pursuing clinical trials for the candidates, development of the final vaccine, and all other remaining steps towards global distribution including manufacturing, distribution, finances, and marketing.15 Pfizer owns marketing and distribution rights for all but three countries in the world.16 Those three exceptions are: Germany and Turkey where BioNTech themselves markets and distributes, and China where Shanghai Fosun Pharma holds the marketing rights.17 Pfizer and BioNTech share gross profits generated outside of China 50:50.
Fun fact: BioNTech’s headquarter’s street address is “An der Goldgrube 12” which literally translates to “At the Goldmine 12”.
12/27/2020
The BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine has this digital code at its heart. It is 4284 characters long, so it would fit in a bunch of tweets. At the very beginning of the vaccine production process, someone uploaded this code to a DNA printer (yes), which then converted the bytes on disk to actual DNA molecules.
The Codex DNA BioXp 3200 DNA printer
12/19/2021 Moderna's groundbreaking coronavirus vaccine was designed in just 2 days, by Susie Neilson, Andrew Dunn and Aria Bendix, Business Insider
11/25/2021 COVID-19 vaccines poised for launch, but impact on pandemic unclear, by Elie Dolgin, Nature
11/23/2020 Why Oxford’s positive COVID vaccine results are puzzling scientists, by Ewen Callaway, Nature
Preliminary data suggest that the immunization was more effective in trial participants who received a lower dose.
11/17/2020 A vial, a vaccine and hopes for slowing a pandemic — how a shot comes to be, by Carolyn Y. Johnson, The Washington Post
“There’s a lot of times in this industry, you work on something that you know someone — a family member or friend” affected by a disease, said Pamela Siwik, vice president of Pfizer Global Supply. “In this case, it’s the world.”
11/16/2020 COVID vaccine excitement builds as Moderna reports third positive result, by Ewen Callaway, Nature
Preliminary data show that the immunization is 94% effective and seems to prevent severe infections.
11/10/2020 The story of mRNA: How a once-dismissed idea became a leading technology in the Covid vaccine race, by Damian Garde — STAT and Jonathan Saltzman — Boston Globe
As he listened to Rossi describe his use of modified mRNA, Langer recalled, he realized the young professor had discovered something far bigger than a novel way to create stem cells. Cloaking mRNA so it could slip into cells to produce proteins had a staggering number of applications, Langer thought, and might even save millions of lives.
“I think you can do a lot better than that,” Langer recalled telling Rossi, referring to stem cells. “I think you could make new drugs, new vaccines — everything.”
11/9/2020 What Pfizer’s landmark COVID vaccine results mean for the pandemic, by Ewen Callaway, Nature
10/14/2020 How anti-ageing drugs could boost COVID vaccines in older people, by Cassandra Willyard, nature
COVID-19 poses the greatest threat to older people, but vaccines often don’t work well in this group. Scientists hope drugs that rejuvenate the immune system will help.
9/25/2020 COVID-vaccine results are on the way — and scientists’ concerns are growing, by Smriti Mallapaty & Heidi Ledford, Nature
Researchers warn that vaccines could stumble on safety trials, be fast-tracked because of politics or fail to meet the public’s expectations.
9/11/2020 China’s coronavirus vaccine shows military’s growing role in medical research, by Dyani Lewis, Nature
Scientists in the People’s Liberation Army helped to develop the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine to be approved for restricted use.
4/28/2020 The race for coronavirus vaccines: a graphical guide, by Ewen Callaway, Nature
More than 90 vaccines are being developed against SARS-CoV-2 by research teams in companies and universities across the world. Nature’s graphical guide explains each vaccine design.
3/21/2020 About mRNA-1273, Moderna's Potential Vaccine Against COVID-19
2/4/2020 The promise of mRNA vaccines: a biotech and industrial perspective, by Nicholas A. C. Jackson, Kent E. Kester, Danilo Casimiro, Sanjay Gurunathan & Frank DeRosa, NPJ/Vaccines
Assuming that mRNA vaccines will be proven clinically efficacious and safe, one of the central advantages hinges on rapidity of manufacture. Within weeks, clinical batches can be generated after the availability of a sequence encoding the immunogen. The process is cell-free and scalable. Of paramount advantage, a facility dedicated to mRNA production should be able to rapidly manufacture vaccines against multiple targets, with minimal adaptation to processes and formulation. In addition, new targets requiring multi-antigen approaches will benefit from the speed in which mRNA can render multiple constructs.
1/13/2020 The NIH and Moderna’s infectious disease research team finalized the sequence for mRNA-1273. Moderna mobilized toward clinical manufacture, Moderna
NIAID, part of NIH, disclosed their intent to run a Phase 1 study using mRNA-1273 in response to the coronavirus threat. Manufacture of this batch was funded by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
1/11/2020 Chinese authorities shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus, Moderna
10/16/2019 Unlocking the potential of vaccines built on messenger RNA, by Elie Dolgin, Nature
Brad Kremer had waited months to receive an experimental cancer vaccine called BNT122, during which time the melanoma on his skin had spread to his liver and spine. His back pain was getting worse, he was rapidly losing weight and new cancerous lesions kept appearing on his left thigh. “It was very scary,” says Kremer, a 52-year-old sales representative from Acton, Massachusetts.
But within weeks of his first injection in March, Kremer could see that the vaccine was working. The coin-sized melanoma spots that popped up from his skin were now flat discolourations measuring millimetres across. “I was actually witnessing the cancer cells shrinking before my eyes,” he says. Several doses later, his appetite has returned, his back pain has subsided and scans show that his cancer is continuing to retreat.
Kremer’s dramatic response exemplifies the medical potential of vaccines built on messenger RNA. In this method, strings of lab-synthesized nucleotides train the immune system to recognize and destroy disease-causing agents — be they cancer cells or infectious viruses.
10/16/2019 How RNA therapies could be used to tackle the world’s biggest killer, by Chris Woolston, Nature
Researchers hope that understanding the many roles of non-coding RNA in heart health and cardiovascular disease could deliver a therapeutic breakthrough.
10/16/2019 Pharma’s roller-coaster relationship with RNA therapies, by Michael Eisenstein, Nature
After a groundswell of hype and a sceptical backlash, the pharmaceutical industry is learning how to leverage RNA interference in the clinic.
10/16/2019 RNA therapies explained, by Sarah DeWeerdt, Nature
Treatments that target RNA or deliver it to cells fall into three broad categories, with hybrid approaches also emerging.
4/10/2019 mRNA as a Transformative Technology for Vaccine Development to Control Infectious Diseases, by Giulietta Maruggi, Cuiling Zhang, Junwei Li, Jeffrey B. Ulmer, and Dong Yu1, NIH US National Library of Medicine
Due to the ability of the host’s innate system to sense and respond to RNA sequences of viral origin (reviewed in Chen et al.9 and Vabret et al.22), mRNA vaccines induce robust innate responses, including production of chemokines and cytokines such as interleukin-12 (IL-12) and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) at the injection site.23, 24, 25 These are factors crucial to successful induction of effective adaptive responses against the encoded antigen.26 Currently, two forms of mRNA vaccines have been developed: conventional mRNA encoding the antigen of interest flanked by 5′ and 3′ UTRs, and self-amplifying mRNA derived from the genome of positive-stranded RNA viruses. Self-amplifying mRNA encodes not only the antigen but also the viral replication machinery required for intracellular RNA amplification leading to high levels of antigen expression (Figure 1). Unique attributes of each mRNA technology, as well as the roadblocks that need to be overcome for advancement, are summarized in Table 1.
1/12/2018 mRNA vaccines — a new era in vaccinology, by Norbert Pardi, Michael J. Hogan, Frederick W. Porter & Drew Weissman, Nature Reviews/Drug Discovery
4/21/2016 Genetic secrets of the healthy elderly unveiled, by Erika Check Hayden, Nature
Scientists who have studied the genomes of hundreds of healthy older people say that one of their secrets might be genetic protection against the loss of mental function.The researchers' study, published on 21 April in Cell1, is the largest ever to sequence the genomes of people who have lived long, disease-free lives. Cardiologist Eric Topol of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, California, a leader of the work, says that one of the most difficult challenges was simply to find people who have lived to an old age (around 80 and upwards in this instance) without suffering autoimmune disease, blood clots, most cancers, diabetes, dementia, heart attack, kidney failure or stroke.
4/18/2011 The Vaccine Safety Datalink: a model for monitoring immunization safety, National Library of Medicine
Moderna Site: mRNA Design Studio™ – Digital Design and Ordering of mRNA for Research
Our proprietary in-house digital application suite contains a Sequence Designer module to tailor an entire mRNA, with ever-improving rule sets that contain our accumulated learning about mRNA design. Drug Design Studio utilizes cloud-based computational capacity to run various algorithms we have developed to design each mRNA sequence. The utility of cloud-based capacity allows us to provide flexible computational capacity on demand, allowing the Research Engine to power parallel intake and design of multiple mRNA sequences.
A statement by Moderna on Intellectual Property Matters during the COVID-19 Pandemic can be found here. Representative US patents relevant to our mRNA-1273 vaccine against COVID-19, are available here.
Wikipedia: Polio Eradication
Wikipedia: The Polio Vaccine