Looks like Fauci is on a backtracking rampage. Precondition to be let out in public? https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexan...-might-have-a-vaccine-by-the-end-of-the-year/ Fauci: ‘We Might Have A Vaccine By The End Of The Year’ TOPLINE Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a Wednesday interview that a vaccine for Covid-19 could be ready as early as November, an aggressive timeline that would beat many earlier predictions for when a vaccine might be ready “We have a good chance—if all the things fall in the right place—that we might have a vaccine that would be deployable by the end of the year, by November-December,” Dr. Fauci said on CNN Wednesday morning. Fauci explained that the vaccine trials with Niaid are proceeding “at risk,” meaning researchers are taking “the next steps before the results of the previous step,” which can shorten the development process by months. He also did not rule out the possibility that there may be a second wave of coronavirus: “It could happen, but it is not inevitable.” Many pharmaceutical companies are racing to produce a vaccine as quickly as possible; Pfizer chief Albert Bourla has challenged his team to a “moon-shot-like goal” of having millions of doses of a vaccine distributed to the public by the end of the year. The FDA has fast-tracked vaccine trials and the Department of Health and Human Services has already signed contracts ordering $100 million worth of needles and syringes for a “Covid-19 mass vaccination campaign.” Vaccines usually take much longer than a year to go from development to mass market: the fastest entirely new vaccine developed in the United States took four years—it took 20 months for researchers just to bring a vaccine to clinical trial for the 2002-03 SARS outbreak. CHIEF CRITICS Former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb also said Wednesday that a widely available vaccine is “probably a 2021 event,” saying on CNBC that “we’ll have to have one more cycle of this virus in the fall, heading into the winter, before we get to a vaccine.” Similarly, Merck MRK CEO Ken Frazier called vaccine timelines within 12 to 18 months “very aggressive,” saying to the Financial Times that he would not hold his own company, which has two Covid-19 vaccine candidates, to this timeline. KEY BACKGROUND There has been much uncertainty, speculation and disagreement among the scientific community as to when a vaccine will be ready for Covid-19. Last week, a scientific report from Stat News flagged issues around lack of data and methodology to back much of the optimism held for Moderna’s vaccine, purported as the U.S. FDA’s vaccine front-runner. The scientific community has also raised skepticism around the University of Oxford’s vaccine due to their use of press release rather than traditional methods of scientific announcement (via studies and journal articles) to communicate developments around their vaccine. There are 10 Covid-19 vaccines currently undergoing human trials, according to the World Health Organization, with 114 others in preclinical trials.
Another coronavirus vaccine candidate might be ready sooner than expected https://bgr.com/2020/05/30/coronavirus-treatment-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-candidate-trials-october/ Another potential coronavirus vaccine might be available this fall. Pfizer said the candidate it’s developing with BioNTech could be ready by October if everything goes well. There’s no guarantee that any of these vaccines will work, and several logistic challenges have to be addressed before mass immunization campaigns can be conducted. (More at above url)
Dr. Anthony Fauci says there’s a chance coronavirus vaccine may not provide immunity for very long https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/02/dr-...e-may-not-provide-immunity-for-very-long.html White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said he worries about the “durability” of a potential coronavirus vaccine, saying there’s a chance it may not provide long-term immunity. If Covid-19 acts like other coronaviruses, “it likely isn’t going to be a long duration of immunity,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told JAMA Editor Howard Bauchner. White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said he worries about the “durability” of a potential coronavirus vaccine, saying there’s a chance it may not provide long-term immunity. If Covid-19 acts like other coronaviruses, “it likely isn’t going to be a long duration of immunity,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during an interview Tuesday evening with JAMA Editor Howard Bauchner. “When you look at the history of coronaviruses, the common coronaviruses that cause the common cold, the reports in the literature are that the durability of immunity that’s protective ranges from three to six months to almost always less than a year,” he said. “That’s not a lot of durability and protection.” The National Institutes of Health has been fast-tracking work with biotech firm Moderna on a potential vaccine to prevent Covid-19, which has infected more than 6.28 million people worldwide and killed at least 375,987, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (More at above url)
A coronavirus vaccine could require you to get two shots. Here's why. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ire-two-shots-effective-heres-why/5309046002/ A vaccine against the coronavirus may not be as simple as one jab and you're immune. There's a high likelihood an eventual vaccine will require a two-dose series, a month or so apart, with the possibility of a booster several years later, adding to the complexity and cost of administration and distribution. Much remains unknown about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Even as physicians scramble to understand the natural history of the disease, scientists around the world are working to find vaccines to protect humanity against the virus. Only now are some of the broad outlines of what immunizations might look like becoming clear. The two doses are likely to be required because SARS-CoV-2 is a newly emerged virus that no one has developed antibodies against. Also, with many potential vaccines being created using new systems it’s believed two doses will be required for full immunity. The first shot would prime the immune system, helping it recognize the virus. The second shot would strengthen the immune response. Of the more than 100 vaccine candidates in various stages of testing, almost all are expected to be a two-dose regime, said Barry Bloom, an immunologist and professor of public health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “As far as I am aware, with one set of exceptions, all the front-line vaccine developers are contemplating two shots," he said. "The one exception is Merck, which last week pushed forward on two vaccines, each of which they hoped would be one-shot vaccines.” The exact dosing will become clear as potential vaccines reach human clinical trials, said Dr. Kelly Moore, associate director of immunization education for the Immunization Action Coalition. “The answer is to be found in the human studies that will show how we respond to the vaccine," she said. "Phase 1 studies look at both dose size and, if animal studies suggest two doses might be needed, then they also look at one dose versus two doses.” Any coronavirus vaccine that requires two doses will probably need to be given about a month or two apart, though that’s still being worked out, said L.J. Tan, chief strategy officer with the Immunization Action Coalition and co-chair of the National Adult Immunization Summit and National Influenza Vaccine Summit. When the first dose of a vaccine is given, the immune system reacts to something it hasn’t seen before. “The immune system looks at it and it processes and remembers it, developing antibodies and immune cells,” which takes about 14 days, said Tan. “If an infection comes at that point you’ll fight it off and you won’t get sick – you’ll be immune.” With some pathogens, however, a second dose is necessary to get the immune system fully primed to fight off an infection. Vaccines series are common Another unknown is whether one round of inoculations will be enough. Some vaccines like measles, make a person immune for life. That’s in part because the measles virus is stable and doesn’t change. A disease like influenza, which is actually comes from multiple strains of flu that continually mutate and sometimes recombine, require updated vaccines every year. So far, it appears SARS-CoV-2 is relatively stable, indicatingvaccines that protect initially likely will be able to serve as boosters to maintain immunity for longer, said Bloom. However, a person's antibody response might lessen over several years. With Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2, some data shows antibody levels decline with time. “The MERS serology data suggest that by about three years it could fade,” said Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University and scientific director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research program. Whether the same will be true of SARS-CoV-2 isn’t yet known. If it is, a booster injection might be needed after a couple of years. “Only testing will tell,” said Edwards. In the common coronaviruses that cause the common cold, immunity tends to last from three to six months to almost always less than a year, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday. "It may be completely different with this coronavirus, with SARS-CoV-2, it may be that they induce a response that’s quite durable. But it if acts like other common coronaviruses, it’s not likely going to be a very long duration of immunity," he said. Double-dose challenges But there may be no way around a two-dose regime, which is common for many immunizations given to children. Measles vaccine comes in two doses. The pneumococcal vaccine, which prevents some types of pneumonia, meningitis and the potentially deadly blood infection sepsis, comes in four doses. The DTaP vaccine, which prevents three deadly diseases, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, is given in five doses. These are administered in childhood when babies and children are seeing a pediatrician frequently, so it’s easier to ensure the immunizations are given in the correct time frame. In fact, the timing of young children’s checkups is built around immunization schedules to make it as easy as possible for parents. Get daily coronavirus updates in your inbox: Sign up for our newsletter now. In adults, things are more complicated. Hepatitis B, HPV, Hepatitis A and shingles vaccines all require a series of two to three doses for adults, and most adults who need them haven’t gotten them, in part, because completing the series can be hard, said Moore, of the Immunization Action Coalition. Undertaking a two-dose vaccine protocol for the entire country would require coordination and meticulous record-keeping. A key player will be state immunization registries, which are run by state health departments. Mostly used now used to ensure children get all the vaccinations they need, the registries are gearing up to record and track the vaccinations of large numbers of adults, Moore said. The directors of the immunization programs in the state health agencies have set up work groups and are having calls every two weeks with CDC and then immunization registry managers, said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers. “We’re lucky to have time to prepare,” she said
Even a Vaccine Won’t Erase this Pandemic And other tough, contrarian messages from virologist William Haseltine. We ignore them at our peril, he says. https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/06/03/Vaccine-Will-Not-Erase-Pandemic/ When William Haseltine told a group of fellow scientists in 1986 that an AIDS vaccine would be unlikely because of the difficult nature of the virus, he was booed off the stage. His colleagues even threw stuff at him. “But we still don’t have a vaccine for AIDS,” he recently told Reuters. “We don’t know for sure that a [COVID-19] vaccine won’t be developed, but I can say with the same conviction — don’t count on it.” In the last couple of weeks the virologist also has offered some jarring observations on the nature of the coronavirus, self-promotion by drug labs, the hazards of rapid reopenings and our global unpreparedness for what is yet to come. He’s done so on his website and in a variety of interviews. Besides being so unfortunately right about HIV, why else should we pay attention to what Haseltine is saying these days about COVID-19? Start with his resume. A retired Harvard medical professor and a cancer/HIV researcher, Haseltine has been around the block a few times as both as hardcore researcher and biotech entrepeneur. Over his career he worked on or developed drugs for HIV/AIDS, anthrax, and other ailments. The 76-year-old is also an expert on aging and dementia. And he started up Human Genome Sciences with Craig Venter in 1992. Here, then, are eight cautions by William Haseltine that, while hard to hear, may save many lives if heeded. 1. Beware of those who purvey premature hope. Haseltine’s years of experience cause him to caution against being manipulated by emotion. A number of firms have been giving “a false impression of progress” on the vaccine front, he worries. Cambridge-based Moderna, for example, made headlines last week with news of a safety trial on just eight healthy individuals for its vaccine. The value of the company’s stock exploded. Although the company said their experimental vaccine raised neutralizing antibodies, it said nothing about levels. In a pointed Forbes column, Haseltine noted that Moderna’s tidbit of information was “the equivalent of a chief executive of a public company announcing a favourable earnings report without supplying supporting financial data, which the Securities and Exchange Commission would never allow.” In the months ahead citizens should remain skeptical about overinflated claims and remember that “medicine and science are not matters of majority opinion; they are matters of fact supported by transparent data.” 2. Even a vaccine that works likely won’t solve the pandemic. Haseltine also wants citizens to appreciate this bit of wisdom: a vaccine will not likely end this pandemic for several reasons. For starters the most affected population, people over the age of 60, are the most difficult population to develop vaccines for. As the immune system ages, the effectiveness and duration of vaccines wanes with it. “It is very difficult to develop a vaccine for older people,” notes Haseltine. Second, coronaviruses make difficult vaccine candidates because they produce many proteins that allow them to trick and evade the immune system. SARS-CoV-2 can play tricks with the immune system in a way other viruses can’t. The human immune system offers a two-pronged response to a viral invasion. One response produces antibodies which bind to the virus and eliminate the intruder. The other response more directly attacks infected cells. But SARS-CoV-2 can mute the first response and make the other hyperactive says Haseltine. “SARS-[CoV]-2 is amplifying what happens to us naturally as our immune systems age.” As a result experiments with vaccines for SARS and MERs have not ended well. Some generated neutralizing antibodies, but they didn’t provide adequate protection, says Haseltine. Third, Haseltine doesn’t think an adenovirus-based vaccine such as the one proposed by CanSino Biologics, and now being tested in Halifax, will do the trick either. Haseltine reported in Forbes that the antibody response in the older test group, ages 50 to 60, was “less robust that younger volunteers.” So how is that product going to work in an elderly population “known to mount poor long-term immune responses to novel infections?” So there is no guarantee the current race to develop a vaccine will end successfully as The Tyee has already underscored. “We don’t know whether the vaccine will offer sterilizing, long-lasting immunity — as hoped — or only transient, partial protection, as seems more likely.” 3. A flattened curve is not a road to victory. Haseltine also thinks many people aren’t taking the disease seriously enough. The veteran virus fighter compares COVID-19 to polio. It, too, was a cold virus with a nasty bite. One in 200 people infected came down with paralysis and of those 10 to 15 percent died of muscle paralysis. It, too, spread through what white coats call “the oral-fecal route” on people’s hands and contaminated surfaces. As the world experiments with reopening after the first wave, often without adequate testing, contract tracing and isolation facilities in place, people should regard everyone they meet as infected and act accordingly. “That’s the only safe assumption you can make,” he said. “And don’t assume that if you’ve been infected, you’re protected.” He advises people not to let down their guard or stop wearing a mask in crowded places until their city and region hasn’t recorded a COVID-19 case for a month. 4. ‘Herd immunity’ is a dubious prospect. Haseltine also thinks you can forget about herd immunity as some kind of saving grace. There is a reason that we all get colds every year and that’s because immunity to the four corona viruses that cause colds doesn’t last long. “There’s no such thing as herd immunity for this disease. I doubt it will ever exist,” Haseltine said in a Reuters interview, because “people who have had it are getting reinfected.” He thinks Sweden made a bad mistake going for herd immunity, and then cites the nation’s death rate which is higher than any other Scandinavian country. 5. We remain woefully unprepared. The next thing Haseltine wants you to think about is our chronic and ongoing lack of pandemic preparedness. COVID-19 caught the world with its pants down because governments and corporations ignored all the warnings. If you want to know how predictable pandemics can be just watch the film Contagion, says Haseltine. Nearly 15 years ago the emergence of SARS and then MERS demonstrated that coronaviruses could be an existential threat. Although researchers started work on 20 potential drugs for these coronaviruses, they all got shelved. “Those drugs lay dusty on the shelves in China, in Singapore, in Hong Kong, in Europe, in the United States, and in the [United Arab] Emirates and Saudi [Arabia] where they were discovered and shown to work in animal models of both SARS and MERS.” The reason: there was no economic model to develop them. Haseltine thinks it is more likely researchers will find a suitable drug treatment for the virus before they develop a safe vaccine. 6. Nature is not nearly as controllable as we wish. The pandemic is also sending people a deep and profound message, says Haseltine. “We are part of Nature. We don’t control Nature. Do we control volcanoes? Do we control hurricanes? Viruses are part of nature and their job is to grow in us,” Haseltine recently told Reuters. 7. Much bigger threats loom. Globalization and human population growth have created pretty good ecosystems for new colonizing viruses. Every day the viral world makes trillions of random mutations and some of these mutations produce viruses that can adapt to human environments better than others. More pandemonium is coming, warns Haseltine. “It is only a matter of time before a coronavirus that is far more lethal and contagious than this one emerges to ravage the world’s population,” says Haseltine. “When that happens, we will no longer be talking about a global death toll in the ‘mere’ hundreds of thousands.” He also suspects the world is overdue for a deadly influenza outbreak capable of removing one to two billion people from the planet. 8. Changes in behaviour can save us now. And far more certainly than any vaccine. Last but not least, we should pay more attention to the most important part of this story: changing human behaviour can stop COVID-19 dead in its tracks. Haseltine notes that countries including Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand contained the virus so well they are in pursuit of eliminating it, and have done so without drugs or vaccines. They did it by testing, contact tracing and isolation of the infected in special quarantine hotels and facilities. They also demanded that their citizens wear masks. “We have effective tools at hand,” says Haseltine. “It is a sad thing to witness. Not all countries are doing that.” Only one thing really sets successful nations apart from struggling jurisdictions during this pandemic and that’s experience. South Korea had battled a MERS epidemic and was prepared. The province of British Columbia just happened to have a chief medical officer with experience battling SARS. Learn from nations that learned from their recent past pandemic horrors, Haseltine advises. Though even this call to action he tinges with a dour skepticism borne of his long experience. Having watched catastrophes unfold, from AIDS to COVID-19, Haseltine arrives at a simple conclusion. “We fail collectively in undertaking the necessary action to assure that predictable calamities do not strike again and yet again.”
It's not news that a vaccine won't be some free pass from illness. What is news is now we're being told that even with a vaccine further shutdowns and quarantines may be needed from time to time, which is the jest of the article. The new life goal of risk free will have us all in constant fear and a state of blind obedience to the whims of whatever wanna be King is of your governor or mayor. Add in the we must never say anything offensive again, that too will be determined by the new government gods, we may never leave our homes again.
1. I don't think its been conclusively established people who had it, have been reinfected. I think we would be seeing it to be much more common than the Navy Ship incident and few studies which were retracted. So its either very rare or not happening. If you have new evidence for reinfection I would like to read it. 2. he is absolutely correct... as the WHO said the other day... the way we should be dealing with this is to isolate the infected and trace their contacts to tamp down clusters. That is what the data shows. You don't have to lock down the healthy in the low risk groups 3. He is wrong about Sweden's death rate.
AstraZeneca agrees to make COVID-19 vaccine for Europe https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/astrazeneca-agrees-to-make-covid-19-vaccine-for-europe Drugmaker AstraZeneca struck a deal Saturday to supply up to 400 million doses of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine to European Union countries, the latest in a series of agreements as scientists, governments and pharmaceutical companies race to combat the virus. AstraZeneca plans to begin delivering the vaccine to European countries by the end of this year under the agreement with the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance, formed this month by France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. All other EU member states will have the chance to take part under the same terms as the original alliance members The cost of making the vaccine, which was developed by Oxford University, is expected to be offset by funding from the governments. “This agreement will ensure that hundreds of millions of Europeans have access to Oxford University’s vaccine following approval,” AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said in a prepared statement. “With our European supply chain due to begin production soon, we hope to make the vaccine available widely and rapidly.” The deal is the latest in a series of agreements to produce the vaccine — even though it is not certain it will work to prevent coronavirus infections. Because of the desperate need for a vaccine amid the pandemic that has killed more than 426,000 people worldwide, AstraZeneca is scaling up manufacturing with human trials still under way. The Anglo-Swedish company recently completed similar agreements with Britain, the United States, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a public-private-charitable partnership based in Norway, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, another public-private partnership headquartered in Geneva, for 700 million doses. It plans to produce an additional 1 billion doses under a deal with the Serum Institute of India. Soriot told reporters Saturday that conversations were also under way with the governments of many other nations, including Japan, Russia and Brazil. “We are also looking at China,'' he said, “China, as you know, are developing their own vaccines. ... It's important to make several bets on different vaccines in every country.'' The vaccine was developed by Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, working with the Oxford Vaccine Group. Testing of the experimental COVID-19 vaccine began in April with a study involving over 1,000 healthy volunteers in Britain aged 18 to 55. Another round of testing with 10,000 volunteers began last month. Other companies, including Moderna and Sanofi, are racing to develop and produce a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus, a step experts say will be crucial to allowing countries to ease public health lockdowns and restrictions on public life.
Oxford scientists accidentally give patients wrong dose in coronavirus vaccine trial EXCLUSIVE: The University of Oxford insists “no pause to the study is required” after a smaller dose was administered by accident during a trial of a potential Covid-19 vaccine https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/oxford-uni-scientists-accidentally-give-22197078