It might allegedly take six months to vaccinate 75% of the population as stated above in attachment, except if you approach it from a pareto point of view where 80% of the severe problems are coming from 20% of the population then it will not take six months to cover that segment unless the prioritization schemes are goofy, which they are to some degree and are not to some degree. Couple months will continue to make A LOT of difference if the vaccine is properly targeted. Doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to be good.
Let's take a look at what Russia is doing to promote their vaccine. A vaccine that nearly 2/3 of their own population is unwilling to take and is widely viewed as barely effective. US officials believe Russia launched a disinformation campaign against the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to boost the status of its own https://www.businessinsider.com/rus...lic-doubt-about-pfizer-covid19-vaccine-2021-3 Russian intelligence is sowing disinformation about the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, the WSJ reported. Four foreign-owned outlets are disseminating info that questions the Pfizer vaccine's efficacy and safety. US intelligence believes this effort to undermine Pfizer is a way to bolster Russia's vaccine. Russian intelligence officials are attempting to cast doubt on the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. Four publications acting as fronts for Russian intelligence are disseminating information that questions the efficacy and safety of the Pfizer vaccine, State Department officials told the Journal. Russia is pedaling misleading information designed to make Americans question whether the US rushed the approval process for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. "We can say these outlets are directly linked to Russian intelligence services," an official at the State Department's Global Engagement Center told the newspaper. "They're all foreign-owned, based outside of the United States. They vary a lot in their reach, their tone, their audience, but they're all part of the Russian propaganda and disinformation ecosystem." Back in November, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country is hoping to distribute its controversial Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to other countries. Russia announced a successful coronavirus vaccine in August, but Sputnik V was approved under questionable circumstances. It was released before it went through phase 3 trials. In the United States, phase 3 is a requirement before a drug or vaccine can be vetted and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The rushed timeline led health officials to speculate whether the Kremlin coerced vaccine makers into putting out Sputnik V quickly to gain a leg up in the global race for a cure to the novel coronavirus. US intelligence officials now believe this effort to undermine the Pfizer vaccine coming out of the Kremlin is another way to bolster the status of Sputnik V, the Journal reported. Johnson & Johnson is the latest company to enter the vaccine game. The healthcare giant is offering a single-dose vaccine that the company expects to distribute to 4 million Americans shortly. Johnson & Johnson, whose vaccine gained FDA approval toward the end of February, said it expects to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of March and 100 million by the end of June. Including Johnson & Johnson's vaccine, the United States is now distributing and touting three effective vaccines to Americans. Pfizer and Moderna — the two companies whose coronavirus vaccines preceded Johnson & Johnson's — have efficacy rates of 94% and 95%, respectively. Vaccines against the coronavirus have been rolling out in the United States since December 2020, after Pfizer became the first company to produce and receive FDA approval to distribute. With this third vaccine on the market, the US is expected to have enough doses to immunize 300 million people. More than 57 million people in the United States have already received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses, while Johnson & Johnson's requires one. Last week, President Joe Biden said the US plans to have enough doses of coronavirus vaccines for "every adult in America" by the end of May. Biden's announcement sped up the timeline to reach this threshold by about a month, Insider's Eliza Relman and Sonam Sheth reported. It's been almost a year since the WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic. Since then, more than 28 million people in the United States have contracted the virus, according to the latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Of that, more than 500,000 Americans have died. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Fauci says vaccine supply will be "dramatically increased" in weeks ahead https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthony-fauci-coronavirus-vaccine-supply-face-the-nation/ Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden, said Sunday that the number of vaccine doses available will sharply rise in the coming weeks following federal approval of a third coronavirus vaccine. "We need to gradually pull back [on restrictions] as we get more people vaccinated, and that is happening every single day, more and more people, and particularly as we get more doses, which are going to be dramatically increased as we get into April and May," Fauci said on "Face the Nation" of scaling back mitigation measures. The Food and Drug Administration has now authorized three COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use, with the most recent, Johnson & Johnson's single-dose shot, receiving the green light last week. The U.S. is now administering at least 2 million shots each day, and 87.9 million doses have been given, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Mr. Biden has predicted that by the end of May, there will be enough vaccine supply to cover all adults, while Fauci said high school students likely will be able to receive their vaccines by the fall term and elementary school students by the first quarter of 2022. Fauci said that as the vaccine supply increases, the federal government will "have to put a big push to get it into people's arms." "But by that time, we're going to be doing much, much better," he said. "We're going to have community vaccine centers, vaccine in pharmacies." While the number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. has sharply declined over the last few weeks, public health officials warn the nation has hit a plateau of between 60,000 and 70,000 new infections per day, which Fauci said is "not an acceptable level." That leveling-off comes as some states like Texas and Mississippi have begun to lift mask mandates and loosen other restrictions designed to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus against the guidance of federal public health officials. Fauci said the nation is "going in the right direction," but stressed that mitigation measures should be rolled back slowly and carefully as more Americans are inoculated. "Don't turn that switch on and off because it really would be risky to have yet again another surge, which we do not want to happen because we're plateauing at quite a high level," he said. While the number of Americans who have received their shots continues to grow, the Biden administration has yet to release guidance on activities for those who have been fully vaccinated. But Fauci said those guidelines from the CDC should come out "imminently," within the next few days. "Every day that goes by that we keep the lid on things will get better and better because we're putting now at 2 million vaccinations into the arms of individuals each day, and as the days and weeks go by, you have more and more protection, not only of individuals, but of the community," he said. "So we're going in the right direction. We just need to hang in there a bit longer."
Let's take a look at what falsehoods the government-controlled Russian news agency is pushing about their vaccines today. They are trying to claim their vaccine has more efficacy than mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer -- which Phase 3 trial results demonstrated to be complete nonsense. At the end of the article the Russian government doubles down claiming their vaccine is better than J&J as well. TASS - Russian news agency Swedish scientists believe Sputnik V can be more efficient than other COVID-19 vaccines However, the Swedish scientists who joined forces with their German and Dutch colleagues found out that some vaccines use a different entry mechanism to what was believed previously, which explains their higher efficacy rates https://tass.com/world/1263957 Sweden’s Umea University scientists have discovered the reason why certain COVID-19 vaccines act differently to what was initially expected. The study they conducted helps us to understand the mechanism behind higher efficiency of vector-based vaccines such as the Johnson & Johnson jab produced in the US and Russia’s Sputnik V, SVT channel reports. Such shots pierce into body cells through adenoviruses and launch antibody response when inside. However, the Swedish scientists who joined forces with their German and Dutch colleagues found out that some vaccines use a different entry mechanism to what was believed previously, which explains their higher efficacy rates. "This is how it works, the vaccine ‘gets a free ride’ to the cells and when there uses protein as a key to open up cells and transfere the gene responsible for launching antibody production," Niklas Arnberg, virology professor at Umea University, said. "It was previously believed that vaccines relying on adenoviruses as a transportation agent used spike protein as a key to get into cells. However, when we tried to reproduce this in a lab, we failed. Then, we started researching a different protein, the so-called hexon protein, and discovered that it is precisely what acts as a cell key." At the same time, Arnberg highlighted the better level of protection provided by the Russian vaccine. "Johnson & Johnson offers inoculation with one dose, while the Russian vaccines needs two. This will likely lead to Sputnik V ensuring better protection than Johnson & Johnson," he commented.
Even aside from the propaganda and disinformation campaign, some scientists- early on- including Fauci- acknowledged that some of the traditional approaches that the russians and others were taking might be highly effective but would be extremely hard to ramp up hard and fast as the worldwide threat would require. The mRNA vaccines have major production advantages. So, even if one were able to show that a Russian vaccine was highly effective (data and info out of russia and china are too murky to do that) that in and of itself does not make it impressive. For example, most scientists still believe that a traditional inert virus vaccine would be somewhat effective but none of the major companies have gone down that road or even bothered to test it because they dont think they can ramp up with that type of vaccine, I guess the culturing process is slower than one would think or something.
A new website will connect people with leftover COVID-19 vaccines by sending out texts when a shot is going spare https://www.businessinsider.com/website-will-connect-people-with-leftover-covid-19-vaccines-2021-3 Allocating excess doses has been a challenge in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Dr. B, a triaged vaccine standby list, could help get those doses to high-priority recipients. The team behind Dr. B is trying to reach vulnerable groups through community partnerships. The COVID-19 vaccine is in high demand, with signup sites oversaturated and vaccine hunters eager to snag a dose. This mad dash for vaccines sometimes results in leftover doses, however counterintuitive that may seem. Usually, it's because someone booked multiple vaccine appointments and failed to cancel the double. At the end of the day, a vaccine provider might realize there are extra doses left over, and they're forced to find a way to use those shots within six hours of when they were thawed. In the early stages of rollout, those extras went to well-connected friends and family members or "someone who's buying potato chips in the pharmacy," ZocDoc founder Cyrus Massoumi told Insider. Massoumi estimated that between 20% and 30% of vaccine doses have been allocated this way — essentially by chance — and he was determined to create a more equitable solution. Paging Dr. B. The online vaccine standby list is named for Massoumi's grandfather, who was affectionately called Dr. Bubba and worked as a physician during the 1918 flu pandemic. Today, the Dr. B website serves as a triaged waitlist for getting leftover vaccine doses to people in need. More than half a million people have signed up for Dr. B so far. To join, you're prompted to enter your name, ZIP code, phone number, and any information that your local health department might collect to determine your priority status, like your age, medical risk factors, and occupation. When there's an extra dose of vaccine at a site near you, Dr. B will send a text message to whoever is at the top of the priority list in the area. The list is designed to catch vaccine seekers in phases 1a or 1b who have not yet been vaccinated — much like priority boarding at an airport, Massoumi said. "If, because of your priority, you got that first class ticket, and there's a long line at United, you jump to the front of the line," Massoumi told Insider. "That's how our system works, and it's inherently more equitable." Dr. B launched quietly with targeted community outreach If you missed Dr. B's soft launch in January, that's because the team was trying to give people in underserved communities a leg up. "There is some degree of benefit of signing up first," Massoumi told Insider. "So to the extent that we can go to the communities that perhaps have the greatest need and make sure that we're especially concentrating on them, that's very important to us." Black and Latinx Americans are arguably most in need, as they are two to three times more vulnerable to severe COVID-19 cases and deaths but still receive fewer vaccine doses than their white counterparts. Massoumi said that within each priority level of the standby list — among people with the same age, zip code, job, and health conditions — extra doses are first come, first serve. Whoever gets on the list early has a head start advantage. This type of approach could lead to the most well-connected folks getting priority, bioethicist Arthur Caplan previously told Insider. And the nature of Dr. B means the service is only available to people with phones and the ability to sign up online. Dr. B worked with community action networks, church leaders, and other unofficial partners to make sure the people with the most need, not the most connections, were included in the early stages of the standby list. Now that the patient-facing side has grown to reach more than half a million people, the real work — coordinating with providers to actually distribute extra doses — has begun. The team is trying to reach high-risk groups At this moment, Dr. B is working with two vaccine providers: one in Little Rock, Arkansas, and another in Queens, New York. More than 200 additional sites are on deck to join the effort as the service scales up. Massoumi told Insider that, when he visited Dr. B's pilot site in Queens, he was surprised to see healthcare workers were using the service to get leftover shots. Since states have opened up their rollout to phases beyond 1a, one might assume that all doctors and nurses had already been fully vaccinated. However, some healthcare workers who are not affiliated with a hospital were overlooked in the first stage of rollout and are still trying to book appointments through an oversaturated system. Dr. B's prioritization ensures that those people will be the first to benefit from the service. Uché Blackstock, founder of Advancing Health Equity, has been considering how to better reach communities of color since the first vaccine was authorized. She previously told Insider that reaching people who are vulnerable to COVID-19 due to racism could be tricky because states aren't using race as an eligibility metric for the vaccine rollout. Indeed, Montana is the only state that explicitly prioritizes people to get vaccinated based on their race or ethnicity, and Dr. B doesn't ask for patients' race unless the state does, Massoumi said. But by rolling out the service in locations that coincide with vulnerable groups, the service could reach those in need. "I think that you could possibly take a map at a zip code level and see, based on those communities most impacted, those are the communities that are going to need the most resources," Blackstock said.
Massive blow to Putin as Russians SNUB vaccine with just 3% taking jab because they ‘don’t trust him’ RUSSIANS are snubbing the country’s own Sputnik V vaccine out of distrust for Vladimir Putin’s government. The Sputnik V jab has been sent around the world with Germany the latest country to consider using it but just 3 per cent of Russians have taken it. Russia's tiny vaccine uptake compares to 32.1 per cent in the UK and 17.1 per cent in the US, according to Our World in Data. Recent polls show that less than a third of Russians are willing to get the Sputnik V vaccine amid mistrust of Vladimir Putin's government. Lingering distrust of the authorities from the Soviet Communist era means that as many as three quarters of Russians believe Covid is a man-made biological weapon, reports the Wall Street Journal. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14276534/blow-putin-russians-snub-vaccine/
America could soon be swimming in COVID-19 vaccines: The shift from scarcity to surplus could bring its own problems https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...cine-us-surplus-april-coronavirus/4595458001/ In just two months, the United States could be swimming in COVID-19 vaccine. The 500 million 0.5 or 0.3-milliliter doses expected to be shipped by then literally are enough to fill a 55,000-gallon swimming pool. As hard as it is to imagine now as people frantically call, click and line up to get vaccinated, the nation is close to shifting from a situation of scarcity to one of abundance. “It's not a switch that flips, but it's a sliding scale that happens differently community by community,” said Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser for the COVID Response Team. “This is not something that will start at some magical day in the future. It has begun today, and it's something that we have to make sure we're addressing." With a plentiful supply of vaccines, there will be more urgency to convince the reluctant to accept it, experts say. Otherwise, the abundance of vaccines will become a stagnating surplus that threatens to undermine the nation's ability to move beyond the pandemic. "When we start to have more vaccine available, we're really going to be in bad shape because what we're going to see is a lot of people who don't want to get vaccinated," said Bernadette Boden-Albala, dean of the public health program at the University of California, Irvine. So far, about 18% of all Americans have been immunized against COVID-19. Boden-Albala thinks there will be vaccine surpluses in some areas as soon as early April. Then, the challenges will start. "If we've got whole states in this country that don't want to mask and don't want to socially distance, then I'm very concerned we'll have people there who don't want to be vaccinated either," she said. Spreading the message: Free vaccine Messaging will matter, experts say. The easiest group to reach will be those who've simply put it off because of the hassle to get an appointment. For them, the message needs to be that immunization's quick, easy and free, said Christopher Morse, an expert on health communication at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. "You want to tell them it's free and how easy it is to get an appointment," he said. "Something like, 'In the time it takes you to order a cup of coffee, you could be vaccinated against COVID-19.'" The message should not be "we've got tons of vaccine" because then people will be convinced they can put it off for longer, he said. Some people who haven't gotten vaccinated simply haven't had the time or felt rushed to do so. Messages about why it's worth their while will be needed, experts say. "You might say, 'Get vaccinated, spend Easter with your family,' Or a church might encourage people to be fully vaccinated so they can sing together," said Dr. Kelly Moore, deputy director of the nonprofit Immunization Action Coalition. Younger people who don't necessarily feel at risk might be convinced to get vaccinated to help others. But they might be more enticed so they can go out to the movies again, eat dinner with friends or hang out in bars. "They're going to be focusing more on the social impact versus the health impacts," Morse said. Mobile clinics, pop-up vaccination sites and public service announcements from local leaders will be important to reach those in low-income communities of color where vaccine uptake has lagged because of access and hesitancy. Such efforts have begun in some places, but they must ramp up significantly as a greater percentage of the population is immunized and the extent of vaccine reluctance becomes clear, experts say. In California, Orange County is sending eight-person vaccination travel teams into homeless camps, jails and other hard-to-reach populations. "They come in a van, no appointments required," and they vaccinate whoever is available, said Margaret Bredehoft, deputy agency director of public health services. Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, director of the Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard University, says such "last mile" delivery channels need to be prepared now to reach vulnerable communities. "We're going to see vaccination availability, for example, at food banks," she said. Setting these smaller vaccination events up requires a lot of precision, said Moore. "You want to make sure you have enough people together when you pop open one of the vaccine vials," she said. "For the Pfizer vaccine, you've got six hours to give five doses. For Johnson & Johnson, it's five doses and for Moderna, it's 10. You don't want doses to go to waste when only two people show up." The politics of vaccine hesitancy Public health officials are buoyed by one apparent shift: Vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans, which started out high, appears to be falling. In December, just 42% said they planned to get vaccinated. That number is now 61%, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Friday. Vaccine hesitancy overall also is falling. In September, 49% of Americans told the Pew research group they probably or definitely wouldn't take the vaccine. By last month that number had fallen to 30%. But that still leaves 75 million people who may not be taking the doses already purchased by the U.S. government for use. Experts say at least 65% of people, and likely closer to 85%, must be vaccinated to reach herd immunity. And there are significant partisan differences in terms of who wants a vaccine. Pew found 83% of Democrats said they'd gotten vaccinated or planned to get vaccinated, compared to only 56% of Republicans. "We’re going to see a point where there’s a real polarization where people are getting vaccinated and people are not," said Dr. Corey Casper, CEO of the Infectious Disease Research Institute in Seattle and a professor of global health at the University of Washington. While areas with high vaccination rates will see few infections, communities with lower rates may continue to see cases. "They’re going to see a huge use of resources in those areas. It’s going to hurt their economies," he said. He had expected COVID-19 would be the nation's common enemy, but it hasn't played out that way. The extreme distrust of anything from the government from people on the right has surprised him. "I've never seen anything like this," he said. "We’re making progress with other groups, but we haven’t seen the dial moving very much among white Republicans. That’s a concern,” said Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington, D.C., think tank. Will employers require vaccination? It appears unlikely Americans will be forced to get a shot. Employer mandates for vaccination would be tricky, said Michelle Mello, a law professor and legal health expert at Stanford University. From a regulatory standpoint, it would be difficult to enforce because so far all three vaccines being used in the United States have emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, not a license, said Mello. There's also not yet solid data showing vaccination makes it less likely someone can transmit COVID-19. "Once that exists, it would allow employers to say it's an intervention that prevents harm to others," Mello said. But for now, she thinks most employers will embrace incentives rather than mandates. "Everyone sees the benefit of making it voluntary," she said, though employers might think of sweetening the pot. "If some percentage of your workers are going to feel like crap after their doses, maybe you give them the day after off." What would US do with extra vaccine? If the U.S. does end up with a surplus of vaccines, what will it do with it? The Council on Foreign Relation's Bollyky said there might be an appetite to help the rest of the world. "You might start to see, sometime this summer, a willingness to donate some, though not necessarily, all vaccine," he said. There are two reasons for it: One based on health, and one on politics. Diseases don't respect borders. If COVID-19 continues to rage elsewhere, the U.S. will remain at risk. Almost all high-income countries – 94% – have begun vaccinating residents. Only four out of the 29 lowest-income countries have, according to the Council. While the U.S. has held back its vaccine for its residents, Russia and China have stepped into the breach, making doses available to other nations. "There are reports the Biden administration is looking into starting to donate more vaccine in Asia to counteract the potential influence that China may gain from donating doses," Bollyky said. Helping other nations won't just score political points, it will also help protect Americans against a wily foe we're still figuring out, said Moore, of the Immunization Action Coalition. "The virus will exploit its advantages if we let down our guard or allow many around the world to go without the protection of vaccination," she said. (Article has charts and video)