Coronavirus (OLD)

Originally Posted by Hugh

Seems a bit harsh, but OK...

BREAKING: Loss of taste and smell added to official symptoms list

[Carth]

Originally Posted by Mick

BREAKING: Loss of taste and smell added to official symptoms list

Wonderful

I expect to see a massive increase in the amount of people infected when all those with a heavy cold/mild flu input their symptoms into the tracing app.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Mick

BREAKING: Loss of taste and smell added to official symptoms list

Based on a few friends' choice in music, they've had CV-19 for a long time!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...xR37PyHbUBrngo

As some countries buy up drugs thought to be useful against the coronavirus, causing global shortages, and the Trump administration does deals with vaccine companies to supply America first, there is dismay among public health experts and campaigners who believe it is vital to pull together to end the pandemic.

While the US and China face off, the EU has taken the lead. The leaders of Italy, France, Germany and Norway, together with the European commission and council, called earlier this month for any innovative tools, therapeutics or vaccines to be shared equally and fairly.

“If we can develop a vaccine that is produced by the world, for the whole world, this will be a unique global public good of the 21st century,” they said in a statement.

Seriously?Is it really going to be a case of leaving the rest of the world to tread water?

[papa smurf]

Originally Posted by Maggy

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...xR37PyHbUBrngo



Seriously?Is it really going to be a case of leaving the rest of the world to tread water?

Brits to be the first to get coronavirus vaccine if UK make 30 million successful doses by September

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/116437...us-vaccine-uk/

[jfman]

Originally Posted by papa smurf

Brits to be the first to get coronavirus vaccine if UK make 30 million successful doses by September

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/116437...us-vaccine-uk/

One of the something like 400 clinical trials on vaccines ongoing. Can file this away with the antibody test stories from March/April.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by papa smurf

Brits to be the first to get coronavirus vaccine if UK make 30 million successful doses by September

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/116437...us-vaccine-uk/

I'd rather have an accurate anti-body test available before end of June.

Originally Posted by papa smurf

Brits to be the first to get coronavirus vaccine if UK make 30 million successful doses by September

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/116437...us-vaccine-uk/

The Sun

Professor Sarah Gilbert, who is working on a vaccine with a team at the university, is confident it will work and says it could be ready in just months.

What she actually said..

"The best-case scenario is that by the autumn of 2020, we have an efficacy result from phase 3 and the ability to manufacture large amounts of the vaccine, but these best-case timeframes are highly ambitious and subject to change”

And she said that in early April, before the clinical trials started on the 24th April - the Sun is just recycling old news...

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Pierre

I'd rather have an accurate anti-body test available before end of June.

Serum tests in Spain are showing that antibodies are present in about 5% of the population. The centre of an outbreak in Germany (Heinsberg) is showing 14%.

I'd gladly be wrong but I suspect the view that most people don't know they've had the virus and go about their lives as normal will be proven incorrect.

That said, we do have catch up to since we have tested so few symptomatic patients to date. So probably worthwhile but not the silver bullet some hope for.

[jonbxx]

If the UK has 30 million doses of the Oxford vaccine available in September, I'll be a monkeys uncle. In fact, I will happily punt £10 for whatever boondoggle Nigel Farage is involved in at that time if it happens.

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by papa smurf

Brits to be the first to get coronavirus vaccine if UK make 30 million successful doses by September

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/116437...us-vaccine-uk/

You'd think the Govt would have learned from the Turkish PPE fiasco - announcing something before they'd ordered it, and it turned out to be useless.

Originally Posted by Mr K

You'd think the Govt would have learned from the Turkish PPE fiasco - announcing something before they'd ordered it, and it turned out to be useless.

tbf, they didn’t.

It’s the Sun conflating the funding given by the Government and taking the best possible scenario from the testing (which no one in the real world would ever do...).

As the actual test lab (Oxford Vaccine Centre) says about the Phase 1 tests

A high proportion of vaccines are found not to be promising even before clinical trials. Moreover, a significant proportion of vaccines that are tested in clinical trials don’t work. If we are unable to show that the vaccine is protective against the virus, we would review progress, examine alternative approaches, such as using different numbers of doses, and would potentially stop the programme.

[jonbxx]

Originally Posted by Hugh

tbf, they didn’t.

It’s the Sun conflating the funding given by the Government and taking the best possible scenario from the testing (which no one in the real world would ever do...).

As the actual test lab (Oxford Vaccine Centre) says about the Phase 1 tests

Phase I tests aren't even tests to see if the vaccine works, it's just a safety study to make sure the vaccine doesn't kill people. Phase II will test to see if the vaccine raises an immune response while phase III will test to see if the vaccine protects against coronavirus.

There are some serious ethical issues with phase III as there is no reliable treatment for COVID19 so you can't just be injecting people with virus to see if the vaccine protects. The added wrinkle is that the prevalence of COVID19 in the wild is quite low so you would need to give a LOT of people the vaccine to get an idea if the vaccine protects. We're talking more than 30,000 people.

You can roll up phase II and III together if you're in a real hurry but it is a big risk...

[Taf]

Which strain will it protect against? One? Or all 3?