Heh. Joe sent the WHO four plus billion to buy covax vaccines. That money will buy barrel loads of chinese vaccines to promote chinese influence in Africa and South America. Of course. 4 billion will not be enough. Need to reload. cha-ching, cha-ching. Big Guy gets 10.
Let's take a look at the Seychelles experience with the Chinese COVID vaccines. The Seychelles was touted as the "most vaccinated" country. After having most of their residents vaccinated, they eased restrictions and invited tourists back to the country earlier this year. Within weeks of this occurring they moved to having one the greatest percentage of COVID cases per capita on the face of the earth. The government assumed that it was safe to open up because the Chinese COVID vaccines including Sinopharm would be effective. They found out the hard way that the Chinese COVID vaccines they used were worthless. Earlier Seychelles summary - https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/latest-vaccine-news.343809/page-105#post-5381713
One chart shows how COVID-19 vaccines stack up against 4 worrisome variants, including the one found in India https://www.businessinsider.com/cov...-variants-india-south-africa-brazil-uk-2021-5 Some coronavirus variants are more transmissible and can partially evade vaccine-induced antibodies. But COVID-19 vaccines appear to be effective against many variants, including those found in India. The charts below compare worrisome variants and how well leading vaccines work against them. Sixteen months into the pandemic, half of all US adults have been vaccinated, and the number of new daily coronavirus cases has fallen below 30,000 for the first time since June. But infections involving worrisome coronavirus variants continue to pop up. Some of these mutated strains are more transmissible than earlier versions of the virus, while others can partially evade antibodies developed in response to prior infections. So concerns linger about how well the authorized COVID-19 vaccines work against these variants. Earlier this year, lab studies exposed blood samples from vaccinated people to the variants first found in South Africa and Brazil. The results showed that the samples generated fewer protective antibodies that could neutralize those variants than they did when exposed to the original virus. But as more people get vaccinated, real-world data has started to trickle in from areas where these pernicious variants dominate. This offers a better look at how well leading shots work at preventing symptomatic infections. And the results are promising: none of the variants that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization are monitoring can fully evade vaccines. Plus, reduced antibody responses haven't necessarily translated into poorer protection against infection. The COVID-19 vaccines even seem to work against a group of variants discovered in India this winter, called B.1.617, which likely contributed to the country's coronavirus surge. Data from the UK government, obtained by the Financial Times, suggest that two doses of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines offer a high degree of protection against B.1.617. The chart below summarizes what we know so far about how well five vaccines work to protect people from four of the most worrisome coronavirus variants. Comparing worrisome coronavirus variants Countless versions of the coronavirus circulate worldwide, each separated by a small number of genetic mutations. Once a slew of mutations makes a particular strain better at infecting people, deadlier, or more able to evade the antibodies generated from a vaccine or previous infection, geneticists label it a variant of concern. There are four of these, according to the WHO: B.1.1.7, the variant initially found in the UK in September; P.1, which was discovered in December; B.1.351, which was detected in samples from South Africa dating back to October; and B.1.617, a group of strains first spotted in India this winter. (More charts and information at above url)
Something that is getting really lost in all of this vaccine talk is natural immunity. There are millions of people with natural immunity that get disregarded in these studies and really shouldn’t. I’d be very curious to know how natural immunity from having contracted Covid protects against variants.
Covid is able to be lethal and disruptive because it is a novel virus. ie. your system does not recognize it and has to build an immune response from scratch. For any person who has had a quality vaccine or a actual case of covid, the base covid virus is no longer a novel virus. So any future variant may or may not make you ill depending on how closely the variant resembles the variant you were previously exposed to but if it is not longer a novel virus and you still have a functioning immune system you are not starting from scratch so there should be major benefit there even if you get ill. Similarly, influenza B- for example- is absolutely frigging deadly- to an amazon tribe that has had not contact with the disease. Ditto for some common cold viruses. But once the person has had it once or a multi-strain flu shot it is no longer a novel virus. So an amazon guy goes to the city. Gets a flu shot or two. Next year the virus is a slightly different variant, he sick and feels like crap and says, " I took the flu shot, and it dissent do shit, I felt like I was going to die." Welcome to the rest of the world. Meanwhile his cousins back at the village got the same virus and died. So - as always -we come back to varying definitions and expectations of what "protect" means. Getting a little bit sick each year or every so often from these viruses whether covid or flu helps you to keep your immunity software updated and is not necessarily a bad thing. Ideally the vaccine or an actual case gets you to that level where it is no longer a a novel virus. Just by definition and actual fact it would no longer be a virginal exposure. We know from studying antibodies that serum antibody count is highly variable- that is why the recovery plasma treatment works well where it does and not so well where it does not. However, antibody count in the blood is not necessarily the test. It is also how well the native immune cells became programmed into memory cells that hold the code for emergency ramp up of antibodies even if they are no longer in serum. Also- and put your helmet on- GWB treats this as a "Shots Fired" topic- T cells also get programmed and are titted up and ready to go. Bottom line, unless the virus mutates to the point that it a new virus, it is no longer a novel virus to those who have had it and even though they may encounter a new variant THEY BE OFF TO A MUCH BETTER RESPONSE START THAN WHEN IT WAS NOVEL VIRUS. Even if they get sicker than a dog. From a data point of view, this could or would look like many new cases from the new variant but with a lower death and hospitalization rate.
Vaccination Rates Are Going Back up Thanks to the Teens https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wi...-rates-are-going-back-up-thanks-to-the-teens/
World anxiously waits to see where Biden will send America's vaccines https://www.axios.com/biden-donate-...ies-c9919893-ba9f-49d6-a0b5-f9e1d5b7a2d8.html The U.S. is about to pivot from hoarding vaccines to sharing them globally, and countries around the world are trying to secure their places in line. Why it matters: President Biden has promised to donate 80 million doses by the end of June. With domestic demand waning, he’ll soon be able to offer far more. But the White House hasn't said how it will distribute the initial 80 million, or when it will feel comfortable truly opening its supply to the world. The state of play: The U.S. is currently second only to China in terms of vaccine production, but had until recently been the only major producer to keep virtually its entire supply at home. While more than half of all Americans have had at least one dose and dozens of rich countries aren't far behind, less than 1% of people across the world's low-income countries have been vaccinated. With the U.S. set to belatedly become a global vaccine powerhouse, Biden has some high-stake decisions to make. Zoom in: Facing a fast-unraveling domestic crisis fueled in part by the pandemic, Colombian Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez traveled to Washington last week with an urgent request: access to some of the 80 million doses. She’s not alone. Such requests have come in from all over the world, but countries in the Americas have been particularly frustrated with Biden's unwillingness to share up to now. Most have purchased doses from Russia or China and some, like Mexico, have turned to both. Ramírez told Axios that many of the vaccines Colombia has ordered aren’t expected until December, and the already hard-hit country is now seeing its worst spike yet. The first decision Biden has to make is whether to send doses to individual countries, share in bulk through the WHO-backed COVAX initiative, or — as White House officials have indicated is most likely — pursue some combination of the two. A European diplomat who spoke with Axios argued that the U.S. should reject “vaccine diplomacy” as practiced by Russia and China and bolster multilateralism by sharing with COVAX, which aims to provide every participating country with enough doses to cover 20% of its population this year. Some countries are almost entirely reliant on COVAX, but export curbs from India have left the initiative months behind and with hardly any supply in the near term. Yes, but: Experts including Zeke Emanuel, who served on Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board during the transition, argue that vaccines should be shipped where they’re urgently needed and can be readily distributed, not through COVAX’s population-based system. And while Biden has said the U.S. donations will be driven by science and not geopolitics, there are clear soft power benefits to controlling distribution more directly. What's next: In addition to the donations, producers like Pfizer and Moderna will be able to export U.S.-made doses once they've fulfilled their U.S. contracts. But many of those would be expected to go to rich countries with existing contracts. Biden could exercise additional purchase options — including 300 million doses each from Pfizer and Moderna — to allow the government to choose the vaccines' destinations while also hedging against the need for boosters. The big picture: 80 million doses is only a sliver of America’s supply, and a fraction of the global need. “The real question is what threshold we’re going to use to start aggressively donating doses,” says Krishna Udayakumar, director of Duke University's Global Health Innovation Center. Rather than stockpiling on shelves or in freezers, Udayakumar argues, the U.S. should donate rapidly now, with the knowledge that more supply will be available as new domestic needs arise. The White House has sounded far more cautious, saying it wants to be "oversupplied and over-prepared" at home. What to watch: Rich countries will control a huge chunk of global production even after their initial needs are met, and the U.S. has been the first to make such an ambitious pledge to share doses in the near term. Watch for more pledges and more coordination between developed countries, including at the G7 summit in mid-June.