All About Vaccines

[CaptainEurope]

So Slovakia (an EU member) received a Sputnik V delivery from Russia.

They tested it and are pretty sure this is not the same vaccine that the Lancet tested and found effective.

Now Russia is accusing them of sAboTAgE and asking to get the vaccine back.

This is why I'll prefer to get a vaccine from a country with independent scientists and a free press.

The Russian side called it “fake news.”

“All Sputnik V batches are of the same quality and undergo rigorous quality control at the Gamaleya Institute,” it said. “The quality of Sputnik V has been confirmed by regulators in 59 countries.”

But the Slovaks said those vaccines seem to “have only the name in common.”

[SquirrelMan]

So Slovakia (an EU member) received a Sputnik V delivery from Russia.

They tested it and are pretty sure this is not the same vaccine that the Lancet tested and found effective.

Now Russia is accusing them of sAboTAgE and asking to get the vaccine back.

This is why I'll prefer to get a vaccine from a country with independent scientists and a free press.

So... Russia spreads disinformation about the virus and the vaccine on Western social media via trolls and bots, Russia sends a different quality vaccine out from the one they had tested by scientists... and when they get caught, they immediately ask to get all the doses back screaming "contract fraud"?

Not suspicious at all. Putin will do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to weaken the West.

[Tami]

Going this afternoon for my first Moderna shot. A little nervous, not so much about the vaccine but about the process of actually going there and getting it.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Going this afternoon for my first Moderna shot. A little nervous, not so much about the vaccine but about the process of actually going there and getting it.

Good luck! Let us know how it turns out.

[babyblob]

Just got home from getting my dad his first dose. He ended up getting the Phizer shot. it has been about an hour an a half since he got it and he is dizzy but other wise doing fine.

[Tami]

Got back home about an hour ago, it couldn't have been easier. No side effects, so far, no long lines, it was very fast and very efficient.

[babyblob]

Got back home about an hour ago, it couldn't have been easier. No side effects, so far, no long lines, it was very fast and very efficient.

Im glad all went well

[Tami]

Im glad all went well

Thanks. I'll find out next month if what some say about the second dose being worse than the first is true or not. Even if it is, it can't ever be worse than actually catching COVID

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Just got home from getting my dad his first dose. He ended up getting the Phizer shot. it has been about an hour an a half since he got it and he is dizzy but other wise doing fine.

Got back home about an hour ago, it couldn't have been easier. No side effects, so far, no long lines, it was very fast and very efficient.

Good for both of you!

[Tami]

Hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses go unordered by states amid outbreaks, spurring calls for new approach

States have delayed ordering hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses available to them even as coronavirus outbreaks escalate — a sign the nation is moving past its supply pinch and now faces more acute challenges related to demand, staffing and inoculation of hard-to-reach populations.

The question that defined the early weeks of the vaccine rollout was why states were taking so long to administer the doses they got from the federal government. Four months into the effort, what’s most mystifying is the number of states waiting to order all the doses they’ve been allotted, based on their adult populations and the supplies available that week.

When Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) last week asked White House officials if they would consider sending more vaccine doses to her state during a deadly surge, the state appeared not to have ordered 360,000 doses then available, puzzling federal officials who instead advised her to work with experts to make sure Michigan’s supply was being deployed effectively.

Experts argue that four months into the immunization campaign, and with more transmissible variants of the virus spreading throughout the country, states should no longer be encountering bottlenecks preventing them from making use of their full vaccine allotments.

“States and their health-care providers need to have the capacity at this point to deliver the vaccine doses available to them each week,” said Jason L. Schwartz, an assistant professor of health policy at Yale University and a member of Connecticut’s vaccine advisory committee. “We shouldn’t be leaving vaccine doses on the table during this time.”

[Zelena]

Not suspicious at all. Putin will do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to weaken the West.

Quite the tempting devil at the moment, Putin… He should vaccinate his own population first before being so profligate…

[Kusanagi]

Got my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine yesterday, the experience was almost anti-climatic after a year of waiting. Whole process took about a half hour, 15 minutes of that was just waiting to make sure I didn't experience immediate side effects. Currently arm is a little sore, but that's been the worst of it. Looking forward to the second dose.

[Jim Kelly]

I found that the effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine hit me about ten hours after getting the shot. Then it was like if I had a flu--with fever, chills, aches and pains. That lasted about 36 hours. I sweated it out last night and then woke around midnight feeling like my old self again.

[CaptainEurope]

China for the first time admit that its vaccine is not nearly as good as the other ones available:

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour.
https://www.ft.com/content/c54b02d6-...0-a9353800efd3

China’s Center for Disease Control is thinking about mixing vaccines and varying the sequence of doses to boost efficacy. It is the first time a government body has discussed publicly that there are concerns over the effectiveness of Chinese jabs.

Gao Fu, the CDC head, told a forum on Saturday that the agency was “considering how to solve the problem that the efficacy of existing vaccines is not high”, according to local media.


...




Some of the WeChat social-media posts on Gao’s remarks were swiftly censored, according to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“It is the first time . . . a government official publicly admitted that the protection rate is a concern in the vaccination drive,” Huang added.

China had administered 65m doses across the country by the middle of March.

Unlike other vaccine producers, China’s manufacturers have not published their phase 3 trial data, leading to accusations of a lack of transparency over the vaccine’s effectiveness on different groups.

Any new strategy will have ramifications for the more than 20 countries that China said it was supplying in mostly bilateral “vaccine diplomacy” deals. As of March, China had supplied 40m doses abroad.

Chile is facing another Covid wave from new variants, despite a successful rollout of China’s Sinovac vaccine. The efficacy of a single dose was only 3 per cent, compared with 56 per cent with two shots. Experts have not linked the latest wave to the vaccine’s efficacy rate.

If reported numbers from China are correct, it's not so much of a problem there that the vaccine has low efficacy, as their tough lockdowns drove back the virus quite well. But it's tragic for countries like Brazil, Chile, and Senegal who relied on China's vaccine gifts. The rest of the world needs to step up - maybe a single jab of mRNA is enough for people who got the low yield Chinese vaccine?

And what if people take bigger risks, go back to living their normal lives, while only 56% protected at best?

[JackDaw]

I found that the effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine hit me about ten hours after getting the shot. Then it was like if I had a flu--with fever, chills, aches and pains. That lasted about 36 hours. I sweated it out last night and then woke around midnight feeling like my old self again.

That was very similar to my experience...except after 24 hours took paracetamol and felt substantially better very quickly.

I afterwards found out that a fair number of nurses are advising taking paracetamol straight after Astra Zeneca jab, and I intend doing that when I get second dose. (Though I’d expect fewer side effects next time round anyway.)