Covid 19 CRISIS

It's a study with low five figure participants. It can't make any predictions for side-effects that happen once per six figure people, probably not even reliable predictions for side-effects that happen once per five figure people.
Which is why it's good we are doing Phase 4 observation.
 
Study data from the AstraZeneca Phase 3 trial in the US! This trial is super-relevant as it is run by the same governing body and to the same rules as the Pfizer and Moderna trials before.

Stat reports:
...and as if AstraZeneca were working to actively damage their product's reputation, they managed to upset the trial's independent monitoring board, and even worse, Dr. Fauci and NIAID:
NIAID said:
Late Monday, the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) notified NIAID, BARDA, and AstraZeneca that it was concerned by information released by AstraZeneca on initial data from its COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial. The DSMB expressed concern that AstraZeneca may have included outdated information from that trial, which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data. We urge the company to work with the DSMB to review the efficacy data and ensure the most accurate, up-to-date efficacy data be made public as quickly as possible.
It seems like AZ released numbers from an interim analysis in February, not the final readout from last week. Probably because that numbers looked better.

This is such a gigantic clusterfuck. AZ promises updated numbers within the next 48 hours.
 
The UK has given so many AZ jabs at this point that I struggle with that idea that it's suddenly insta blood clot (or other side effect typically listed in the 1 in 100k/1M section of the medicine documentation you never read) if you take it.
 
The UK has given so many AZ jabs at this point that I struggle with that idea that it's suddenly insta blood clot (or other side effect typically listed in the 1 in 100k/1M section of the medicine documentation you never read) if you take it.
It's not that - since AZ in the EU is mostly given to care workers, which in turn include an above average amount of reproductive age females, who have the highest background risk for blood clodding, there is no surprise at all that we have 18(?) blood clodding events among two million or so vaccinated. So about 1 in 100K, give or take a bit, in the highest-risk cohort, which is fair.

My problem is more with AZ, even in their third try, being unable to come up with a rock solid set of efficacy data. I don't dount the product is up to snuff, I am just shocked by how bad AZ work as a company.

EDIT: Derek Lowe does not mince words:
[T]his has turned into a stupid, needless, mess. Which frankly seems to be AstraZeneca’s pandemic brand so far. It turns out that the company’s press release (as discussed below) is apparently more of an interim read than reflective of the final data. The NIH took the extraordinary step of stating its concerns about this late last night, and there’s all sorts of fallout today – see this article at the Washington Post for more. It seems clear that the final efficacy figure will be lower than the 79% quoted from the initial press release, and it seems clear – at least to me, and to a lot of other people – that handling the data in this way was a deliberate attempt to make that number look better. Anyone should know better than to try this, but especially a large, experienced, multinational drug company whose data handling during this vaccine’s development has already been the subject of a lot of (justified) criticism. I can’t think of a benign explanation, so unless we would like to assume that the company is so breathtakingly incompetent than they did this bizarre move for no reason at all, we’re left with bad ones. This is the sort of thing that gets high-level people submitting resignations and “pursuing other interests”. Isn’t it?
 
Neither do I.
Which makes the press release move even more stupid:
Washington Post paywalled said:
[w]hile the company announced its vaccine was 79 percent effective on Monday, the panel had been meeting with the company through February and March and had seen data showing the vaccine may be 69 to 74 percent effective, and had “strongly recommended” that information should be included in the news release.
So for a five to ten percent gain in topline efficacy they made themselves subject of more ridicule and distrust.
 
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I will be interested to know the results of this test.

 
So, here's a good example of how the German press treats AstraZeneca and the vaccination progress as a whole. An "exclusive scoop" by Berlin broadsheet "Tagesspiegel" titled "AstraZeneca acceptance problems: Hundreds of Thousands of Berliners do not respond to vaccination invite".

The article paints a picture of a faltering vaccination campaign, where of one million invited cops, teachers, and daycare staffers only 360K got their first jab - "this means that approx 630.000 Berliners would be eligible right now, but did not get vaccinated." Verbatim quote. Meanwhile, "over 100.000 AstraZeneca doses are sitting in storage unused".

Two paragraphs further down, below a "Would you be willing to take AstraZeneca despite the risk" poll, the article suddenly shifts to the fact that around 350K further people already booked their appointments - "But, as people with inside knowledge of the process report, there are an estimated 300.000 men and women left who did pass on making a vaccination appointment."

Then of course the article goes into a long tirade on a) how unflexible the vaccination campaign is, who else could theoretically be invited for vaccination right now, but also b) here's a quick recap for all the reasons why one could not want to take AZ.

OK, time for facts:
  1. 300K out of 1Mio people invited for vaccination not responding leaves you with exactly the predicted 70% vaccine uptake. There is nothing surprising here, and the article delivers no proof that this is linked to AstraZeneca except speculation by "experts".
  2. The article itself says there's a backlog or over 350K people in the city of Berlin who have already gotten vaccination appointments for the next days and weeks. That's 10% of Berlin's populace.
    • That is a lot more people than the 100K doses the article claims to be unused is storage
    • This leaves exactly no room to invite the chronically ill or any other made-up group of people shafted by incompetence of our government.
The problem we face is a comically huge lack of supply, not some horrible AZ acceptance problem.

And I hope you guys understand why I am angry at German mass media as much as at our government.
 
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Speaking about the lack of supply, and about how AstraZeneca seems to be trying everything they can to appear in a bad light (or maybe it's just a political/economical battle unfolding):

AstraZeneca on Wednesday denied reports it was stockpiling Covid-19 vaccines in the EU to export to Britain, after Italian inspectors found 29 million doses in a manufacturing plant near Rome.

link
 
Is the most updated advice still to leave groceries, etc sit for 3 days? i know cardboard was updated pretty early on to be just 1 day, but have recommendations on this been refined? I can only seem to find information and articles from the start of the pandemic.

We've continued to be dilligent about keeping newly-bought, shelf-stable foods "quarantined" for 3 days, but man...those first 3 days of cooking meals with the fresh ingredients is such a pain. :lol:
 

What we learned from tracking Covid-19 policies in 186 countries​


 
It's not that - since AZ in the EU is mostly given to care workers, which in turn include an above average amount of reproductive age females, who have the highest background risk for blood clodding, there is no surprise at all that we have 18(?) blood clodding events among two million or so vaccinated. So about 1 in 100K, give or take a bit, in the highest-risk cohort, which is fair.

My problem is more with AZ, even in their third try, being unable to come up with a rock solid set of efficacy data. I don't dount the product is up to snuff, I am just shocked by how bad AZ work as a company.

EDIT: Derek Lowe does not mince words:

Similar:

U.S. health body questions AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine trial data​

 
Is the most updated advice still to leave groceries, etc sit for 3 days? i know cardboard was updated pretty early on to be just 1 day, but have recommendations on this been refined? I can only seem to find information and articles from the start of the pandemic.

We've continued to be dilligent about keeping newly-bought, shelf-stable foods "quarantined" for 3 days, but man...those first 3 days of cooking meals with the fresh ingredients is such a pain. :lol:
From what I've read you can't really pick up anything from packaging etc like that.
 
Wait, we were supposed to quarantine our groceries?
At least very early on, transmission from contact was a suspected method. Rare, but still something mentioned to be careful of a part of all of the recommendations, along with washing your hands after touching anything someone else has touched. This is partially why there were all of those anti-microbial door handle keychain button pushing things, antimicrobial tape put on door push-bars, etc.

The virus was said to be able to survive different amounts of time on different surfaces. For example, 4 hrs on copper, 24 hours on cardboard, and up to 72 hours on plastic of some other metals.


How concerned should you be about disinfecting groceries or packages delivered to the house?​


We should be prudent about packaging. If you receive a package in the mail and don’t have to open it right away, just put it aside — and then go wash your hands. After 72 hours, you can open and unpack it with no worries. Same for non-perishable groceries. If it is a perishable item, let it sit in your fridge for three days without touching it. If it’s a grocery item you need to open or use right away, you may want to wash the packaging with soap and water or clean it with a disinfectant.


Since the start, we've tried to adhere to every possible recommendation. Not for our own safety, but I would HATE to find out that MY contact with someone brought death to them or their family. So, since last march, we've never gone grocery shopping more than once every two weeks (sometimes stretching it to 3 weeks). We've never even done "outdoor dining". We've gotten take-out maybe 10 times, and it's a 2-person job to unpack to keep food "clean" since it doesn't get cooked again. When we get home from the store, one of us keeps "clean" hands to open cabinets and refrigerator/freezer drawers and rearrange, while the other puts things away with "dirty" hands. We clear out two cabinet shelves for all of the "new" items (cardboard in one, plastic in another), we shuffle things around in the refrigerator so that the "clean" stuff is all kept separate. The next day, we've been assuming cardboard is "clean" aside from just normal physical dirt (from being put on the floor, of in a bag with dirty potatoes, etc), etc. But for those three days, any time we touch something with plastic, glass, etc containers, the containers or hands get washed before toughing anything else.

Then we just leave the emptied shopping bags sitting next to the front door for 3 days until we put them back into the car(s).

Not going to lie...a year of washing my hands after touching almost every ingredient's packaging before touching the food, and trying to get "clean" ingredients out from "contaminated" packaging has been...tough. Of course ingredients that get cooked aren't so much a concern.
 
At least very early on, transmission from contact was a suspected method. Rare, but still something mentioned to be careful of a part of all of the recommendations, along with washing your hands after touching anything someone else has touched. This is partially why there were all of those anti-microbial door handle keychain button pushing things, antimicrobial tape put on door push-bars, etc.

The virus was said to be able to survive different amounts of time on different surfaces. For example, 4 hrs on copper, 24 hours on cardboard, and up to 72 hours on plastic of some other metals.
Virus DNA was detectable for that long, yeah. I haven't read any reliable data on actual infection risks... such DNA detections are fairly sensitive, and likely detect stuff in way lower concentrations than needed to have any meaningful infection risk. Similarly, with every transfer you reduce said risk, so if there's trace DNA on the cardboard box of a food item because the person who packed it in to the shelf the day before had it on their hands, you're not going to get covid from touching said box.

Now, washing your hands is still a good idea for a multitude of reasons, and eating said cardboard box is still a bad idea - again for a multitude of reasons.


For not-me info, the page you mentioned says it's outdated, and links to this (in a few steps): https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/food-and-COVID-19.html#risk
"The risk of infection by the virus from food products, food packaging, or bags is thought to be very low. Currently, no cases of COVID-19 have been identified where infection was thought to have occurred by touching food, food packaging, or shopping bags."

Given the literal many millions of cases in the US alone and still zero infections from food packaging, I believe that effort is better spent elsewhere.
 
From the "and this is Germany's main problem right now": Department: While the UK sells festival tickets by the metric fuckton for the second half of the year, giving people something to look forward to, our politicians are doubting whether Oktoberfest will be possible, basically taking any kind of fun in Q3 off the table. This is not how you keep morale up.
 
There are people more paranoid (or worried) than me about getting sick, but Oktoberfest feels completely foreign even to me right now.

Drinking beer from bucket-sized mugs in a tent with maybe 10.000 other people and not a care in the world. I did that in Stuttgart a couple months before the pandemic hit. Little did any of us know...
 
As my shrink put it: "It will take some weeks, maybe even some months, for people to realize they can safely invite friends over and have big parties again. But once they realized there will be no end to the parties for quite some time..."
 
Our next task will be to figure out how to grow livers on a mass scale. :D
 
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