Topic: COVID-19:VERIFIED news sources, 0 politishit, 0 CONSPIRACY SHITE

[redbyrdz]

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/omicron-variant-may-have-picked-up-piece-common-cold-virus-2021-12-03/

Here's one article

Thanks. I still find that an odd headline, it makes it sound as if it was getting less harmful (more like the common cold). But what they found is that one of the new gene sequences wasn't in sars-cov-2 before, but can be found in another coronavirus, HIV, the human genome, and many other viruses. So they could've just as well written, "omicron may have picked up piece of HIV". (Maybe that'd help with vaccination rates...)

[west_london_red]

Hopefully. No deaths confirmed from it yet either.

Not sure why the gov is continuing to expand the red list when the variant is already here and the Xmas season is in absolute full flow. 

Many of us (including me) were criticising the government for not putting India on the Red list quicker than they did, so personally I’m not going to criticise them now for doing it. If preventing new cases coming in means track and trace can try to contain its spread then its at least worth trying.

[TepidT2O]

I wouldn’t buy this story about Omicron being less severe than delta.  So many people in SA have had it, that you have to assume this is due to prior infection giving some level of immunity.

So, wait and see.  SA is very different to the U.K.  more vaccination for a start. Who knows what it will bring, but we seem a long way from being back to square one.

[bornandbRED]

I wouldn’t buy this story about Omicron being less severe than delta.  So many people in SA have had it, that you have to assume this is due to prior infection giving some level of immunity.

So, wait and see.  SA is very different to the U.K.  more vaccination for a start. Who knows what it will bring, but we seem a long way from being back to square one.

Less vaccinated, you mean? 24% approximately.

Many of us (including me) were criticising the government for not putting India on the Red list quicker than they did, so personally I’m not going to criticise them now for doing it. If preventing new cases coming in means track and trace can try to contain its spread then its at least worth trying.

I don’t see the point. Testing before departure and after arrival makes sense so you can ensure everyone travelling does not have covid - but a mandatory ten day quarantine for red listers is fruitless considering the variant is already here and spreading freely. Track and trace? Genuinely didn’t realise that was still a substantial thing.

[west_london_red]

I think it was poor terminology by me, not Track and Trace that we wasted £37 billion on, I should have said contact tracing.

[TepidT2O]

Less vaccinated, you mean? 24% approximately.

I don’t see the point. Testing before departure and after arrival makes sense so you can ensure everyone travelling does not have covid - but a mandatory ten day quarantine for red listers is fruitless considering the variant is already here and spreading freely. Track and trace? Genuinely didn’t realise that was still a substantial thing.

The U.K. has more vaccination …was my point

[bornandbRED]

I think it was poor terminology by me, not Track and Trace that we wasted £37 billion on, I should have said contact tracing.

Genuinely don’t think contact tracing is going to do anything to neuter this variant as it seems to spread so freely and there are no restrictions in this country. There are only 11 countries on the red list but expanding it further whilst allowing people to pack into clubs, pubs, football grounds and you name it would be utterly futile.

[Red Beret]

Many of us (including me) were criticising the government for not putting India on the Red list quicker than they did, so personally I’m not going to criticise them now for doing it. If preventing new cases coming in means track and trace can try to contain its spread then its at least worth trying.

Aye. Slowing down its spread whilst people get their boosters makes perfect sense.

[PaulF]

Keep it away from the vast majority during Christmas which must be the socialising highlight of the year. Well ,beyond new year at least. Then let it spread. It should be much slower post new year with the aim of not overwhelming the NHS.
If we open the flood gates now , we might as well just nuke our hospitals .

[WhereAngelsPlay]

Many of us (including me) were criticising the government for not putting India on the Red list quicker than they did, so personally I’m not going to criticise them now for doing it. If preventing new cases coming in means track and trace can try to contain its spread then its at least worth trying.

It is pointless half measures and has been from the very beginning.

They will also put the country back in lockdown once they've had their jolly and they've all got back home.

In short fuck the Government.

[west_london_red]

It is pointless half measures and has been from the very beginning.

They will also put the country back in lockdown once they've had their jolly and they've all got back home.

In short fuck the Government.

I don’t think anyones praising the government, but I don’t see how we can criticise the government for not red listing India sooner but then say they shouldn’t have red listed Southern Africa and now Nigeria unless there is something I’m missing.

[filopastry]

Good update from John Burn-Murdoch on Omicron focusing more on disease severity

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1467270450111787012

[Macphisto80]

That's exponential growth by the very definition.

We need to get lucky here, otherwise this could be awful.

[west_london_red]

That's exponential growth by the very definition.

We need to get lucky here, otherwise this could be awful.

I don’t think there’s any question it’s going to be bad, be that either the disease and what it does or the lockdowns and measures that need to be taken to stop the disease from being awful. People have said we’re not in as bad a position as March 2020 but that still leaves quite a big window of how bad it can still be without being as bad as March 2020.

[RF]

Getting away from maskgate and moving  on to vaccines.

People mention feeling ill after certain vaccines and give it " oh it must be working then".

My questions are.

1. Did those people who had bad reactions (flu like symptoms and such like) to the vaccines need that uptake of antibodies due to their lack of antibodies ?

2. Did those people that had the vaccine, but had no reactions (apart from a sore arm maybe) actually carry more antibodies anway?

3. Fuck knows.

[bornandbRED]

That's exponential growth by the very definition.

We need to get lucky here, otherwise this could be awful.

Lucky with what?

Assuming continuing efficacy of that data, we should be well positioned in the U.K. due to far higher vaccination rates and the ramped up booster programme. It’s good news.

[filopastry]

Getting away from maskgate and moving  on to vaccines.

People mention feeling ill after certain vaccines and give it " oh it must be working then".

My questions are.

1. Did those people who had bad reactions (flu like symptoms and such like) to the vaccines need that uptake of antibodies due to their lack of antibodies ?

2. Did those people that had the vaccine, but had no reactions (apart from a sore arm maybe) actually carry more antibodies anway?

3. Fuck knows.

As far as I know the 2 (reactions and immune response) are basically independent, I'm in a vaccine trialist group on social media, and the level of antibodies people got when they tested them didn't seem to have any obvious relationship with side effects or lack thereof.

[Macphisto80]

Lucky with what?

Assuming continuing efficacy of that data, we should be well positioned in the U.K. due to far higher vaccination rates and the ramped up booster programme. It’s good news.

I think its obvious. Lucky that isn't more virulent and can escape the vaccines. The growth in cases of the thing, going by the graph posted above, is frightening.

[farawayred]

I came across the Harvard study, saying that Moderna just edges Pfeizer in efficacy against the Delta, both in prevention and hospitalization. The jury is still (way) out on the Omicron.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115463

[TepidT2O]

Good update from John Burn-Murdoch on Omicron focusing more on disease severity

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1467270450111787012

Oh dear….

No evidence it’s less severe, just that the infections are currently in the young

[Bincey]

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/omicron-variant-may-have-picked-up-piece-common-cold-virus-2021-12-03/

Here's one article

A number of experts are very sceptical of this preprint.


"Not going to link to the preprint but I can assure anyone looking at discussions of it, that three amino acids are not proof of recombination between omicron and HCoV-229E (a common cold coronavirus). Its worth also pointing out, that there isn't even BLAST similarity in the region of spike around the 3 amino acid EPE motif between HCoV-229E and omicron. So the idea of this being generated by template switching between the two coronaviruses is simply not on the table."

https://twitter.com/ArisKatzourakis/status/1467223515220914179

[Red-Soldier]

‘Wall of secrecy’ in Pfizer contracts as company accused of profiteering

US company faces scrutiny over Covid profits after UK agrees to secrecy clause

Ministers have agreed a secrecy clause in any dispute with the drugs manufacturer Pfizer over Britain’s Covid vaccine supply. Large portions of the government’s contracts with the company over the supply of 189m vaccine doses have been redacted and any arbitration proceedings will be kept secret.

The revelation comes as Pfizer is accused by a former senior US health official of “war profiteering’’ during the pandemic. In a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation to be broadcast this week, Tom Frieden, who was director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Barack Obama, said: “If you’re just focusing on maximising your profits and you’re a vaccine manufacturer … you are war profiteering.”

Zain Rizvi, research director at Public Citizen, a US consumer advocacy organisation which has examined Pfizer’s global vaccine contracts, said: “There is a wall of secrecy surrounding these contracts and it’s unacceptable, particularly in a public health crisis.”

Rizvi said the UK needed to explain why it had agreed to secret arbitration proceedings. He said: “It’s the only high-income country we have seen that has agreed to this provision. It allows pharmaceutical companies to bypass domestic legal processes.

“The UK government has allowed the drug firms to call the shots. How did we end up in a situation where a handful of drug firms were able to exert so much control over the most powerful governments in the world? It points to a broken system.”

Pfizer has won plaudits for its vaccine delivery programme, but the US multinational faces growing scrutiny over the scale of its profits and the proportion of doses it has delivered to low-income countries.

While AstraZeneca agreed to sell its vaccine at cost during the pandemic, Pfizer wanted to secure its profits. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which now has the brand name Comirnaty, will be one of the most lucrative drugs in pharmaceutical history.

The Channel 4 investigation reveals analysis by one biological engineering expert claiming the Pfizer vaccine costs just 76p to manufacture for each shot. It is reportedly being sold for £22 a dose to the UK government.

The estimated manufacturing costs do not include research, distribution and other costs, but Pfizer says its profit margin as a percentage before tax are in the “high-20s”. Pfizer expects to deliver 2.3bn vaccines this year with predicted revenues of $36bn (£26.3bn).

A report last month by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of organisations including aid charities, said Pfizer and other drug firms have sold the majority of doses to rich countries, leaving low-income countries “out in the cold” . Only 2% of people in low-income countries had been fully vaccinated against coronavirus. Drug firms should suspend intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines, tests, treatments and other medical tools.

Pfizer has faced increased scrutiny allegations of excessive global profits after its partner, the biotechnology company BioNTech, announced in September 2020 it was to receive up to €375m (£320m) from the German government to fund vaccine development.

Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s health policy manager said: “It is deplorable that billions of people around the world are being denied vaccines so that pharmaceutical companies can make obscene profits. Given that public investment was crucial to vaccine development, it’s incomprehensible that pharma monopolies are being prioritised over people’s lives.”

Pfizer has to date pledged 40m doses out of global production to Covax, the UN-backed initiative delivering vaccines for low income countries. This is less than 2% of its global production for 2021. The firm says it aims to deliver at least two billion doses to low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2022.

Pfizer said vaccine production was the “biggest scale-up” in the firm’s history and it was proud to have delivered more than 2bn vaccines to 162 countries. It supplied low-income countries on a not-for-profit price and all other countries were being offered the vaccine at a significantly discounted price.

The company added: “The pandemic has highlighted the extraordinary value that a vibrant private sector can deliver to society.” It said confidentiality agreements were standard practice. The estimated cost of manufacturing the vaccine by a biological engineering expert was grossly inaccurate and meaningless because it did not reflect the true costs of bringing the vaccine to patients, including clinical studies, increased manufacturing efforts and global distribution.

The government said its vaccine contracts were commercially sensitive and it could not disclose any further details. BioNTech did not respond to a request for comment.

Vaccine Wars: The Truth About Pfizer is on Channel 4 at 7.30pm on Friday


https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/05/wall-of-secrecy-in-pfizer-contracts-as-company-accused-of-profiteering

[BarryCrocker]

‘Wall of secrecy’ in Pfizer contracts as company accused of profiteering

US company faces scrutiny over Covid profits after UK agrees to secrecy clause

Vaccine Wars: The Truth About Pfizer is on Channel 4 at 7.30pm on Friday

The Channel 4 investigation reveals analysis by one biological engineering expert claiming the Pfizer vaccine costs just 76p to manufacture for each shot. It is reportedly being sold for £22 a dose to the UK government.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/05/wall-of-secrecy-in-pfizer-contracts-as-company-accused-of-profiteering

To be honest most drug cost next to nothing to actually produce. Most of the costs are associated with R&D and insurance/indemnity.

Still, if I was a drug manufacturer, the ongoing credibility in all future treatments of diabetes, cholesterol, arthritis, etc, from having an effective Covid treatment is where my 'rivers of gold' is going to come from.

Covid-19 is the loss leader for everything else they will sell going forward.

[Red-Soldier]

To be honest most drug cost next to nothing to actually produce. Most of the costs are associated with R&D and insurance/indemnity.

Still, if I was a drug manufacturer, the ongoing credibility in all future treatments of diabetes, cholesterol, arthritis, etc, from having an effective Covid treatment is where my 'rivers of gold' is going to come from.

Covid-19 is the loss leader for everything else they will sell going forward.

The estimated manufacturing costs do not include research, distribution and other costs, but Pfizer says its profit margin as a percentage before tax are in the “high-20s”. Pfizer expects to deliver 2.3bn vaccines this year with predicted revenues of $36bn (£26.3bn).

[west_london_red]

What were peoples expecting exactly? We live in a capitalist society, people make profit. We may not like it, but it’s nothing new either.

[Libertine]

What were peoples expecting exactly? We live in a capitalist society, people make profit. We may not like it, but it’s nothing new either.

True.

Whatever you think about big pharma (and I'm not a fan of this particular one, having previously worked there!), they've produced* a highly effective vaccine that has allowed us to live close to normally with this virus (current situation notwithstanding). The money governments spend on vaccines is probably a fraction of the overall pandemic costs - from economic hits to furlough support etc. The companies that have produced successful and effective vaccines will profit from that. It's how the system works and here it has worked very well.


* and by produced of course I mean bought up an innovative biotech who developed it, in standard Pfizer fashion.

[Red-Soldier]

What were peoples expecting exactly? We live in a capitalist society, people make profit. We may not like it, but it’s nothing new either.

I guess we should all look the other way then 

[Stockholm Syndrome]

Oh dear….

No evidence it’s less severe, just that the infections are currently in the young

To be fair these two comments sound a little promising against the vaccine escape - if vaccination is still at least effective against severe disease, that's good.

And still too early to say either way

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1467270486052777986?t=tlAEpqQvBTISx1Pt7w4pjA&s=19

So what does this all mean?

First up, does it mean Omicron is "more mild" than previous variants?

Well, far more likely it means that people who’ve been vaccinated or infected are showing solid protection against severe disease. And this should not be a surprise!

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1467270489638899713?t=LBZ4OeqS3GhyvU-4TNQlbw&s=19

So is Omicron inherently a more mild strain? No evidence either for or against that at this stage.

But is it more mild for people with immunity from either recent vaccination or infection? Yes! Vast majority of people in Gauteng have either been A bullshit film by a charlatan who unethically exploited his children's friends and lost his medical license for fraud or infected.

[Persephone]

To be fair these two comments sound a little promising against the vaccine escape - if vaccination is still at least effective against severe disease, that's good.

And still too early to say either way

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1467270486052777986?t=tlAEpqQvBTISx1Pt7w4pjA&s=19

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1467270489638899713?t=LBZ4OeqS3GhyvU-4TNQlbw&s=19

Agree with both, at this point get your vaccine and have a decent immunity and ability to fight Omicron. Don't get it and the chances are you'll get pretty sick.

[WhereAngelsPlay]

I don’t think anyones praising the government, but I don’t see how we can criticise the government for not red listing India sooner but then say they shouldn’t have red listed Southern Africa and now Nigeria unless there is something I’m missing.

As I said and have said from the beginning,it's just half arsed,playing to the gallery shite & they know it,if they were a football team they would wait until half time before turning up to the ground

The latest travel rule changes are "a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted," a scientist advising the government has said.

Prof Mark Woolhouse said the new rules had come "too late" to make a "material difference" to a potential wave of the Omicron variant in the UK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59536795

[filopastry]

Another suggestion that we may be looking at 3 -3.5 day doubling time for Omicron in the UK at present, although I suspect there may be some sampling bias here and we were likely continuing to import cases until relatively recently.

https://twitter.com/Forensic_Stats/status/1467497592741318666

[TepidT2O]

Another suggestion that we may be looking at 3 -3.5 day doubling time for Omicron in the UK at present, although I suspect there may be some sampling bias here and we were likely continuing to import cases until relatively recently.

https://twitter.com/Forensic_Stats/status/1467497592741318666

Oh dear.

[west_london_red]

I guess we should all look the other way then 

Or come up with a viable alternative?

[redbyrdz]

So, this pre-departure test...according to the government website, you need to do one, even if you recently had covid. They recommend doing a LFT in that case "because of the lower sensitivity" (!?). But from all that I've heard, you can still test positive on them for quite a while, maybe 3 months. So you can't return home for 3 months because you've just recovered from covid?

[west_london_red]

True.

Whatever you think about big pharma (and I'm not a fan of this particular one, having previously worked there!), they've produced* a highly effective vaccine that has allowed us to live close to normally with this virus (current situation notwithstanding). The money governments spend on vaccines is probably a fraction of the overall pandemic costs - from economic hits to furlough support etc. The companies that have produced successful and effective vaccines will profit from that. It's how the system works and here it has worked very well.


* and by produced of course I mean bought up an innovative biotech who developed it, in standard Pfizer fashion.

I’m not really a fan of big pharma or a hater, a lot of conspiracy theorists have a big issue with pharmaceutical industry so it’s a subject I generally swerve because I don’t want to get sucked into their BS. But what I will say is that 2 doses of Pfizer vaccine = £36, a single night in ICU about £1200 and that’s without getting into things like the cost of long Covid or losing someone. Yes Pfizer are making money hand over fist, but compared to what they have saved it’s nothing for western countries at least but there’s probably a valid debate about developing countries.

[Red-Soldier]

Or come up with a viable alternative?

While AstraZeneca agreed to sell its vaccine at cost during the pandemic, Pfizer wanted to secure its profits. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which now has the brand name Comirnaty, will be one of the most lucrative drugs in pharmaceutical history.

[WhereAngelsPlay]

Or come up with a viable alternative?

Here's one for you.

A Billionaire & corporation tax that funds free healthcare (and much,much more) for every soul on the planet.

[west_london_red]

While AstraZeneca agreed to sell its vaccine at cost during the pandemic, Pfizer wanted to secure its profits. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which now has the brand name Comirnaty, will be one of the most lucrative drugs in pharmaceutical history.

Yes, and it was very noble on the part of AZ and they don’t get the credit they deserve for it but they are the only ones. But there’s a reason why countries are buying the £18 vaccine and not the £4 one, hopefully when other vaccines come along (Novavax one day maybe?), Pfizer might be forced to bring the costs down, but let’s not forget Pfizer are not the worst either. I don’t know if it’s still the case but Moderna were charging twice what Pfizer are.

PS I don’t think the brand name is new, all of the vaccines have weird brand names, the AZ one is Vacceria or something odd like that.

[TepidT2O]

Comirnaty is a mash up of community and mRNA …useless factoid of the day there

[west_london_red]

Here's one for you.

A Billionaire & corporation tax that funds free healthcare (and much,much more) for every soul on the planet.

Hasn’t been managed in the last 100 years, I won’t be holding my breath it’s coming anytime soon.