The COVID-19 strain out of South Africa has landed in England like a hurricane on a beach house. CURRENTLY 1 IN 50 PEOPLE IN ENGLAND ARE INFECTED. You need to go into complete isolation and I’ll explain in our current edition of Radio Free Wall Street.
With L.A. hospitals at capacity, many facilities no longer have space to take in patients who do not have a chance of survival, according to CNN. If EMS workers are unsuccessful in resuscitating a patient whose heart has stopped while in the field, the agency says the patient should not be taken to a hospital, according to the memo.“Effective immediately, due to the severe impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on EMS and 9-1-1 Receiving Hospitals, adult patients (18 years of age or older) in blunt traumatic and non traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) should not be transported [if]return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) is not achieved in the field,” the agency said.
EMS workers are ordered to try and resuscitate a patient for at least 20 minutes. If the patient is stabilized, guidelines say they can be taken to a hospital. If EMS workers are unable to restore a pulse, paramedics are directed in the memo not to transport them to a hospital. To combat the shortage of space, officials have created temporary “ambulance receiving spaces” which are set up outside emergency room entrances. EMS workers can monitor patients until resources are available. Ambulance crews are also pressured to limit their use of oxygen tanks given the shortage due to the coronavirus pandemic. “Given the acute need to conserve oxygen, effective immediately, EMS should only administer supplemental oxygen to patients with oxygen saturation below 90%,” the memo said. Hospitals in the region “have reached a point of crisis and are having to make very tough decisions about patient care,” Dr. Christina Ghaly, the L.A. County director of health services said Monday at a briefing reported by the Los Angeles Times.
WASHINGTON — The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech provides strong protection against Covid-19 within about 10 days of the first dose, according to documents published on Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration before a meeting of its vaccine advisory group. The finding is one of several significant new results featured in the briefing materials, which include more than 100 pages of data analyses from the agency and from Pfizer. Last month, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of 95 percent after two doses administered three weeks apart. The new analyses show that the protection starts kicking in far earlier. What’s more, the vaccine worked well regardless of a volunteer’s race, weight or age. While the trial did not find any serious adverse events caused by the vaccine, many participants did experience aches, fevers and other side effects.
“This is what an A+ report card looks like for a vaccine,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University.
Pfizer and BioNTech began a large-scale clinical trial in July, recruiting 44,000 people in the United States, Brazil and Argentina. Half of the volunteers got the vaccine, and half got the placebo. New coronavirus cases quickly tapered off in the vaccinated group of volunteers about 10 days after the first dose, according to one graph in the briefing materials. In the placebo group, cases kept steadily increasing. The vaccine’s swift impact could benefit not just the people who get it but the country’s strained hospitals, curbing the flow of new patients into intensive care units. Despite the early protection afforded by the first dose, it’s unclear how long that protection would last on its own, underscoring the importance of the second dose. Previous studies have found that the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine gives the immune system a major, long-term boost, an effect seen in many other vaccines.
The efficacy of the vaccine after the first dose is about 52 percent, according to Dr. William C. Gruber, senior vice president of Pfizer Vaccine Clinical Research and Development. After the second dose, that rises to about 95 percent. “Two doses of vaccine provide maximum protection,” he said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a new national lockdown for England until at least mid-February to combat a fast-spreading new version of the coronavirus. Johnson said the country is at “a critical moment,” with cases rising rapidly in every part of the country. Under the new rules, which are set to come into effect as soon as possible, primary and secondary schools and colleges will be closed for face to face learning except for the children of key workers. University students will not be returning until at least mid-February. All nonessential shops and personal care services like hairdressers will be closed, and restaurants can only operate takeout services. As of Monday, there were 26,626 COVID patients in hospitals in England, an increase of more than 30% from a week ago. That is 40% above the highest level of the first wave in the spring.
(AP)
* UK says worried about S.African variant
* Mutations include extensive alterations to spike protein
* Changes could lead to “escape from immune protection”
* Vaccine makers are testing shots against new variants (Recasts with quotes, details from scientists)
LONDON, Jan 4 (Reuters) – UK scientists expressed concern on Monday that COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out in Britain may not be able to protect against a new variant of the coronavirus that emerged in South Africa and has spread internationally. Both Britain and South Africa have detected new, more transmissible variants of the COVID-19-causing virus in recent weeks that have driven a surge in cases. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday he was now very worried about the variant identified in South Africa. Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said that while both variants had some new features in common, the one found in South Africa “has a number additional mutations … which are concerning”.
He said these included more extensive alterations to a key part of the virus known as the spike protein – which the virus uses to infect human cells – and “may make the virus less susceptible to the immune response triggered by the vaccines”.
Lawrence Young, a virologist and professor of molecular oncology at Warwick University, also noted that the South African variant has “multiple spike mutations”.
“The accumulation of more spike mutations in the South African variant are more of a concern and could lead to some escape from immune protection,” he said.
Scientists including BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin and John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, have said they are testing the vaccines against the new variants and say they could make any required tweaks in around six weeks. Public Health England said there was currently no evidence to suggest COVID-19 vaccines would not protect against the mutated virus variants. Britain’s health ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The world’s richest countries have started vaccinating their populations to safeguard against a disease that has killed 1.8 million people and crushed the global economy. There are currently 60 vaccine candidates in trials, including those already being rolled out from AstraZeneca and Oxford, Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinopharm .
Scientists say both the South African and UK variants are associated with a higher viral load, meaning a greater concentration of virus particles in patients’ bodies, possibly contributing to increased transmission.
Oxford’s Bell, who advises the UK government’s vaccine task force, said on Sunday he thought vaccines would work on the British variant but said there was a “big question mark” as to whether they would work on the South African variant. BioNTech’s Sahin told Germany’ Spiegel in an interview published on Friday that their vaccine, which uses messenger RNA to instruct the human immune system to fight the virus, should be able to protect against the UK variant. “We are testing whether our vaccine can also neutralise this variant and will soon know more,” he said.
n the face of rumors suggesting that Bill Gates has installed tracking microchips in the shots, or that the inoculations contain luciferase, a glowing chemical from fireflies whose name makes some people think of the devil, the company suggested it would be policing such claims by making reference to the “official vaccine ingredient list.” What’s actually on the official ingredient list? This week an elderly UK woman became the first person outside of a trial to get the newly approved vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and the US could greenlight the same inoculation as soon as Thursday, December 10. Along with the regulatory actions over the last week have come the most detailed disclosures yet of the new vaccine’s makeup. Here, for instance, is what the US Food and Drug Administration says is in Pfizer’s vaccine:
Reading the ingredient list is like looking at the side of a cereal box, except that you need a degree in organic chemistry to understand it. We got help from various scientists and biotech entrepreneurs to understand what each of the ingredients does and make some educated guesses about others.
Pfizer’s vaccine is the first on the market that consists of actual genetic information from a virus in the form of messenger RNA, or mRNA, a type of molecule whose usual job is to transport copies of genetic instructions around a cell to guide the assembly of proteins. Imagine an mRNA as a long ticker tape carrying instructions. It’s fairly delicate stuff, and that’s why Pfizer’s vaccine needs to be kept at around -100 °F (-73 °C) until it’s used.
The new vaccine, delivered as a shot in the arm muscle, contains an RNA sequence taken from the virus itself; it causes cells to manufacture the big “spike” protein of the coronavirus, which the pathogen uses to glom onto a person’s cells and gain entry. On its own, without the rest of the virus, the spike is pretty harmless. But your body still reacts to it. This is what leaves you immunized and ready to repel the real virus if it turns up. The mRNA in the vaccine, to be sure, isn’t quite the same as the stuff in your body. That’s good, because a cell is full of defenses ready to chop up RNA, especially any that doesn’t belong there. To avoid that, what’s known as “modified nucleosides” have been substituted for some of the mRNA building blocks.
But Pfizer is holding back a little. The spike gene sequence can be tweaked in small ways for better performance, by means that include swapping letters. We don’t think Pfizer has said exactly what sequence it is using, or what modified nucleosides. That means the content of the shot may not be 100% public.
The Pfizer vaccine, like one from Moderna, uses lipid nanoparticles to encase the RNA. The nanoparticles are, basically, tiny greasy spheres that protect the mRNA and help it slide inside cells. These particles are probably around 100 nanometers across. Curiously, that’s about the same size as the coronavirus itself. Pfizer says it uses four different lipids in a “defined ratio.” The lipid ALC-0315 is the primary ingredient in the formulation. That’s because it’s ionizable—it can be given a positive charge, and since the RNA has a negative one, they stick together. It’s also a component that can cause side-effects or allergic reactions. The other lipids, one of which is the familiar molecule cholesterol, are “helpers” that give structural integrity to the nanoparticles or stop them from clumping. During manufacturing, the RNA and the lipids are stirred into a bubbly mix to form what the FDA describes as a “white to off-white” frozen liquid.
The Pfizer vaccine contains four salts, one of which is ordinary table salt. Together, these salts are better known as phosphate-buffered saline, or PBS, a very common ingredient that keeps the pH, or acidity, of the vaccine close to that of a person’s body. You’ll understand how important that is if you’ve ever squeezed lemon juice on a cut. Substances with the wrong acidity can injure cells or get quickly degraded.
The vaccine includes plain old sugar, also called sucrose. It’s acting here as a cryoprotectant to safeguard the nanoparticles when they’re frozen and stop them from sticking together.
Before injection, the vaccine is mixed with water containing sodium chloride, or ordinary salt, just as many intravenously delivered drugs are. Again, the idea is that the injection should more or less match the salt content of the blood.
Pfizer makes a point of saying its mixture of lipid nanoparticles and mRNA is “preservative-free.” That’s because a preservative that’s been used in other vaccines, thimerosal (which contains mercury and is there to kill any bacteria that might contaminate a vial), has been at the center of worries around over whether vaccines cause autism. The US Centers for Disease Control says thimerosal is safe; despite that, its use is being phased out. There is no thimerosal—or any other preservative—in the Pfizer vaccine. No microchips, either.
The vaccine is still known by the code name BNT162b, but once it’s authorized, expect Pfizer to give it a new, commercial name that conveys something about what’s in it and what it promises for the world.
We thank the following people for explaining the vaccine ingredients: Jacob Becraft and Aalok Shah, Strand Therapeutics; Yizhou Dong, Ohio State University; Jason Underwood, Pacific Biosciences; Andrey Zarur, Greenlight Biosciences; Charles L. Cooney, MIT; and the communications staffs of Pfizer and Moderna Therapeutics.
Authored by a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly N. Nick Perry, Bill A416 calls for the “removal and/or detention” of individuals who are identified as a “case, contact or carrier” of a contagious disease.
Such person or group of persons shall be detained in a medical facility or other appropriate facility or premises.
The sweeping powers would be employed in the event of the state government declaring a health emergency due to an epidemic of any communicable disease, the bill proposes. The legislation states that the government must provide “clear and convincing evidence” that the health of others is in danger before ordering a person or group to be detained. People being “removed” will have the right to legal representation and are allowed to supply the telephone numbers of friends or family to receive notification of the individual’s detention.
The law apparently allows the governor or health official to unilaterally approve such detentions but a court order is required within 60 days of confinement, and judicial review is also required if the individual is still in detention after 90 days.
Citizens that are placed in detention will be released once health authorities determine that they are no longer contagious, the proposed law states.
The bill also allows the governor or relevant health authorities to require people deemed potential health risks to submit to medical examinations as well as undergo a “prescribed course of treatment, preventative medication or vaccination.”
The law does not specifically mention coronavirus. On his website, Perry says A416 “Relates to the removal of cases, contacts and carriers of communicable diseases who are potentially dangerous to the public health.”
In fact, the Democratic lawmaker introduced a nearly identical bill during the 2015-2016 legislative session, but it appears to have gone nowhere.
The current iteration of the proposed law will be reviewed by the assembly’s health committee next week.
Although the legislation is still a long way off from adoption, it caused considerable consternation on social media.
There’s a New York State Senate proposal to put disease carriers in detention camps. https://t.co/rOCR1U6aeapic.twitter.com/ViSyeUzFhs
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) January 2, 2021
“I knew Cuomo was a bit of an authoritarian anti-Semite but I never thought the state would go literal Nazi,” Conservative commenter Ian Miles Cheong wrote, referring to New York governor Andrew Cuomo. The governor has previously been accused of imposing draconian crackdowns on New York City’s Jewish community, which has resisted many of the Covid-19 restrictions imposed across the state.
“This was a conspiracy theory, like many other things, 9-10 months ago,” noted a similarly outraged Twitter user.
This was a conspiracy theory, like many other things, 9-10 months ago.
— Wakey Wakey 🇺🇲 (@Wak3yWak3y) January 2, 2021
This isn’t the first time that New York state lawmakers have been accused of promoting naked authoritarianism. Last month, Manhattan Democrat Linda Rosenthal introduced legislation that makes Covid-19 vaccinations compulsory “in certain situations.” It was specified later that any such mandate would apply to “all individuals or groups of individuals who, as shown by clinical data, are proven to be safe to receive such vaccine.”
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The Senate voted 81-13 on Friday to override President Donald Trump’s veto of the fiscal 2021 defense authorization bill, marking a rebuke to the outgoing commander in chief that paves the way for the annual bill to become law for the 60th straight year. The long-anticipated vote comes two days before the start of a new Congress, avoiding what would have been a lengthy process of re-drafting the measure in the new year. The veto override got caught up in political jockeying over $2,000 economic relief checks to Americans affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tried to tie the pandemic relief checks to two unrelated efforts backed by Trump: revoking liability protection for social media companies and a study of the 2020 election. That prompted backlash from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., which led to procedural roadblocks for the defense veto override. Georgia GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are in runoff elections that will decide which party controls the Senate and are scheduled to appear at a rally with Trump on Monday, did not vote on the override. They did support the final bill on Dec.11 despite Trump’s veto threat. Perdue’s campaign announced Thursday he and his wife were quarantining after a campaign aide he was in close contact with tested positive for COVID-19.
The massive, $731.6 billion piece of legislation, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, includes provisions for military pay raises, the construction of military housing and sweeping improvements to the federal government’s approach to cybersecurity, among thousands of others.
Trump took issue with a provision that would rename military bases that honor Confederate figures. He also criticized the bill because it would not repeal legal protections for social media companies found in Section 230 of a 1996 communications law. The president had also balked at language that would impose limits on how many troops could be withdrawn from Afghanistan and Germany — and how quickly. The NDAA passed both chambers of Congress with veto-proof majorities, 83-14 in the Senate and 335-78 in the House. The House on Monday voted to override the veto, 322-87. Senate Armed Services Chairman James M. Inhofe, who previously noted that there was nothing that could be done to change a bill that had already passed the House and Senate, expressed his displeasure with the timing of the veto override. “To all these people who live here, they don’t care. But I care,” Inhofe said Dec. 29. The NDAA’s legislative track record is unparalleled among authorizing committees and gives the House and Senate Armed Services panels a tremendous amount of sway in Pentagon policymaking.
The coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is a major breakthrough for the worldwide pandemic this week leaving the public with many questions, including, how does an RNA vaccine work? A new type of vaccine, the Covid immunisation – which has so far shown minimal side effects – is said to use a tiny part of the virus’ genetic code. Taking a closer look into how it works, here are some of the most frequently asked questions around RNA including what it means, what is an RNA vaccine and of course, how an RNA vaccine works: RNA is an abbreviation for ribonucleic acid and is present in all living cells. The definition, as stated by the Oxford dictionary, is that RNA acts as a messenger carrying instructions from DNA. The RNA vaccine uses small fragments from the genetic code of Covid-19 which would start making the virus inside a human body. This would allow the immune system to recognise the virus as foreign and can therefore attack it with antibodies. In terms of the coronavirus vaccine, the patient would is injected with an initial does, helping the immune system learn to produce antibodies to fight Covid-19 A second dose will be given 21 days after the first. After the vaccination, if the person comes in contact with the virus, antibodies and T-cells are then quickly triggered in order to fight it off. At the moment it is unclear whether this would be a one-off injection or an annual one needed like the flu. Nick Note; They are not injections of DNA into your body. So you are not altering your DNA so its non GMA. You are receiving RAN markers That are the RNA that makes the spike protein which is 1 protein. The spike has 3 to 6 markers depending on how you count them since RNA doubles. The RNA that is injected into your body are gone within 3 days.
As COVID-19 vaccines become increasingly available in the U.S. over the coming months, older adults who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic are expected to be prioritized over the general public. But if you’re 65 or older, you’ll likely need to wait a month or two before you can get vaccines that are in high demand but relatively short supply. Vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The vaccines are already being distributed across the country, and as many as 20 million people could get one before the end of the year, according to Army Gen. Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of the federal Operation Warp Speed vaccine initiative. Still, the initial supply is a drop in the bucket for the 331 million Americans — and 53 million adults over the age of 65 — who may want to be immunized. “Once there’s a vaccine approved for use, there will likely be a period when there is insufficient vaccine to meet demand,” Kathleen Dooling, M.D., an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a CDC advisory panel conference call.
For the latest coronavirus news and advice go to AARP.org/coronavirus.Federal health officials are already creating guidance to help states determine who should receive the vaccines when. The CDC is developing recommendations for which groups should be prioritized, recommending this week that states start by inoculating health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities — where 40 percent of the nation’s more than 277,000 COVID deaths have occurred — when vaccines first become available. But state officials are ultimately responsible for making their own distribution plans, and strategies vary considerably from one state to the next. In Kentucky, for example, nursing home residents and staff are expected to receive vaccines even before some doctors and health care professionals who work in outpatient settings, which is not the norm in most states. Federal and state officials are typically prioritizing older adults, who are at greater risk than younger people of death or serious complications from COVID-19. The CDC estimates people age 65 and older have accounted for 8 in 10 deaths attributed to the coronavirus in the U.S. But in many states, they’re a lower priority than health care workers, nursing home residents and, in some cases, essential workers like police officers. In Massachusetts, for example, older adults who don’t live in long-term care facilities and who don’t have significant underlying medical conditions will likely be immunized in the state’s third vaccine wave. “Older Americans are certainly up there. It could be Q1 or Q2” that they’re vaccinated, says Robert Finberg, M.D., an infectious diseases specialist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a member of Gov. Charlie Baker’s vaccine advisory panel. Many state plans suggest older Americans will likely be vaccinated in the first half of next year, so people of a similar age in two different states likely won’t have months of vaccine difference between them. But health experts warn that the piecemeal nature of the vaccines’ rollout will likely create confusion about who can receive a vaccination and when. There’s also concern about initial growing pains as the government attempts to distribute tens of millions of vaccines that, in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s cases, require people to get second doses a few weeks after their first. “There are complexities involved, and there’s going to be some learning as we go here,” says Megan O’Reilly, vice president for federal health and family issues at AARP, noting that there will be “distinctions and differences across states” over who has initial access to a vaccine.The CDC estimates that 21 million health care workers and 3 million people in congregate community settings such as nursing homes and assisted living facilities will need to be vaccinated. Older adults who don’t fall into either group will need to wait to see if their state health officials follow the CDC’s guidance. More than 285,000 health care workers are confirmed to have contracted COVID-19, along with more than 905,000 long-term care residents and staff, according to data from the CDC and the Kaiser Family Foundation. “They recognized that those who have been disproportionately harmed need to be first in line for lifesaving vaccines, along with the people who care for them,” says Katie Smith Sloan, president and CEO of the LeadingAge nonprofit nursing home advocacy group, describing recommendations from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Save 25% when you join AARP and enroll in Automatic Renewal for first year. Get instant access to discounts, programs, services, and the information you need to benefit every area of your life.A CDC advisory panel is recommending states consider placing people at least 75 years of age and “frontline essential workers” — including teachers, police officers, grocery store workers and postal employees —in their second phase of vaccine distribution (1b). The panel then recommends states prioritize adults between ages 65 and 74 and adults over the age of 16 with high-risk medical conditions, such as obesity, diabetes and heart problems. How quickly will vaccines be shipped out? The federal government is working with state officials and vaccine manufacturers to ensure doses are sent where they’re needed. The Department of Transportation is helping oversee vaccine shipments on a rolling basis, with states receiving shipments proportional to their population size, according to Perna. So states with larger adult populations are initially expected to receive larger vaccine shipments. “We are not waiting for a cluster of vaccines to be available and then push,” Perna said, explaining that they will be shipped “every week based on availability.” Moncef Slaoui, a vaccine expert and chief scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, has outlined a rough estimate for how many vaccines can be shipped to state and local health officials in the coming months. He expects enough vaccines will be shipped in December to vaccinate 20 million people, with an additional 30 million able to be vaccinated in January. He expects 50 million Americans will be vaccinated in February. At that point, and assuming separate vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and others also receive approval, he thinks roughly 75 million Americans could be vaccinated per month. Based on this timeline, many health officials think vaccines will be available to the general public around April or May of next year. But it may take longer. According to the CDC, as of 16 December 2020, 80% of the Covid deaths in the US were aged 65 or older.Additionally, the same CDC data shows that age group 65-74 comprised over 21% of the Covid deaths -more deaths than the combined deaths of all those aged less than 65. Florida, Colorado, Texas, and Ohio have moved seniors 65-74 higher in priority than non-healthcare essential workers. AARP needs to be lobbying the remaining state Governors on our behalf to do the same.
