Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Coronavirus: The Plague of The 21st Century?

That's rightwing thinking for you.

Why do you think that bitch McConnell wants immunity for employers?

University of Alabama is now at over 1000 positive tests.

Like I said: Fiasco.

New info from pathologists today: Several autopsies have found very significant damage in testicles. These are in the structures that make sperm, suggesting coming infertility and lower testosterone in victims so affected. I wonder how young Covid partiers and mask protesters will respond to this new information?

See Peak Prosperity post on YouTube, dated 9/1/2020

Most of them don't plan to have kids anyway. If they announced it would make them sterile, the parties would probably increase.

Older Americans also fear that Social Security benefits might be cut...Younger Americans never expect to be able to collect it so they really don't care if that system collapses.

Banana Republicans are simply using the nihilism of youth to attain their authoritarian goals.

Somehow, I bet they wouldn't like the idea of having lowered testosterone. They may not want to ever have kids, but I don't see them lining up en masse for vasectomies!

CDC is telling all 50 states to setup distribution centers for the Oxford vaccine by November 1st. Just one problem: We won't have a vaccine by then. US is having a very short 3.5 month trial (UK same vaccine 10 months) but this vaccine requires two injections 28 days apart, and then antibodies take about 1 month to show up. That would be the beginning of November, but there is no time in there to see of anybody has side effects or even if the vaccine works!

To see if it works, you need some time after the antibodies are developed so both the vaccinated and placebo arms can be exposed naturally. That's going to take a couple of months at least. Unless they march everybody in the trial into a concentration camp, and expose them on purpose, Dr. Mengele-style.

That just happens to be illegal, and any doctor who participated in that would be charged and lose their license forever, even if people volunteered.

Virtually all health folks with any integrity are telling everybody to NOT get that vaccine! Fauci has, I think, publicly broken ranks with Trump, as well. It will be interesting.

Trump, I think, is trying to get somebody to start shots early so he can take credit and hopes nothing disastrous happens until he takes the oath for the next 4 years and then, if there are problems, blame it all on the developer. If they do this I think I won't get that shot for at least 2 months.

Here is a list of phase 3 test vaccines put up last week:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...r-how-they-work-latest-developments-cvd/

Regarding the in-person school and college fiasco: The obvious problem is promoting ANY clusters of people getting together in groups. Even with masks and hand sanitizing, that's a sure way to spread the virus. Sure, the spread rate can be lower than with no masks, or with everybody shaking hands, but it is still spread. All schools just need to remain on-line until we have all students and employees immunized. It's probably only going to be a few more months.

All this chaos and death because Trump is desperate to get reelected. Next thing he's going to try is to rush out a vaccine by election day with no time for the Phase III trial to collect safety or efficacy data. The Oxford vaccine requires two injections 28 days apart, and then it's about a month before antibodies show up. That gets us to November. THEN the actual trial starts. Researchers need to collect data while the trial subjects are immunized. If they collect it before that, the data adds to the "vaccinated but not immune yet" total and makes the vaccine look ineffective. It's going to take a few months of natural spread to see a difference between the immunized and control arms. That's why the UK is running a 10 month trial on the very same vaccine.

Personally, I would not take the Oxford vaccine until about March with very good safety and efficacy numbers. Any earlier than that and you are effectively volunteering to be part of the Phase III trial!

It does make sense for health care workers in the Covid-19 care space to volunteer for the Phase III trial: They are at more risk from occupational exposure than from being in the trial. If they can get some immunity from the vaccine, that is a plus.

I just read one of Pfizer's documents about their Phase III trial: It said they are going to enroll test subjects irrespective of them already having Covid-19. I think that might be a mistake unless they run T-cell activation tests on those people so they know if they had it or not.

It's perfectly valid to include those people in the trial, but randomly assigning them to the vaccine arm may not tell you anything (because they are already immune). Randomly assigning them to the control arm means it requires a longer trial to get enough people in that arm infected, which proves the vaccine works. If researchers know who they are, they can break that group out into two more arms, and show how the vaccine works for people who already had Covid-19.

Of course, how would they know if a test subject had Covid-19? Probably a lot of their subjects DID, but it was asymptomatic. So they would have to run T-cell activation tests on every candidate! I think their test might be quicker if they prescreened subjects and rejected those already immune.