COVID-19 News and Discussions

User avatar
Time_Traveller
Posts: 2102
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 4:49 pm
Location: Clermont, Indiana, USA, October 7th 2019 B.C.E

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by Time_Traveller »

COVID-19: Britons to have first access to vaccines and treatments when new science super-centre opens
Wednesday 22 June 2022

Britons will have access to all the latest vaccines and treatments when a new research and manufacturing centre opens in the UK.

American pharmaceutical giant Moderna is opening a new mRNA Innovation and Technology Centre that will develop vaccines for a wide range of respiratory diseases, including COVID vaccines that can protect against multiple variants.

Construction is expected to start as early as this year, with the first mRNA vaccine due to be produced in the UK in 2025.

Full details of the venture including where it will be, are not yet available and have been described as "commercially sensitive".

But government officials said the deal will see NHS patients get access to "cutting edge" vaccines while being able to enrol in clinical trials for vaccines developed by the firm.

Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine used messenger RNA (mRNA) - these vaccines teach the body's cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-bri ... s-12638186
"We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams."

-H.G Wells.
weatheriscool
Posts: 12967
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

F.D.A. advisers recommend updated boosters that target forms of Omicron.
Source: New York Times
An expert committee recommended Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration plan on an updated booster shot of the coronavirus vaccines that targets some form of the Omicron variant that has dominated for months. The panel’s vote paves the way for F.D.A. regulators to authorize a new formulation for the boosters that the Biden administration hopes to offer later this year, before an expected winter resurgence of the virus.

The committee debated but did not specify which formulation might work best. The F.D.A. appeared to be leaning toward a combination of the existing vaccine and two subvariants of Omicron, known as BA.4 and BA.5. According to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those two subvariants together now make up more than half of new cases in the country.

Dr. Peter Marks, who oversees the F.D.A.’s vaccine division, displayed a timeline suggesting that regulators would decide on a new vaccine composition by early July, and that a fall booster campaign could begin in October. Manufacturers of the mRNA vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, require roughly three months to begin producing doses with a new composition.

Clinical trial results on a combination of the so-called “prototype,” or existing, vaccines and Omicron itself have received mixed reviews so far. In briefing materials, regulators suggested that such a design is “already somewhat outdated.” The panel struggled with what one member called “trying to predict the future” of where the virus is headed. Another panelist called the data “uncomfortably scant.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/us/p ... n-fda.html
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

At a staff meeting yesterday (my company's first large-scale, in-person event since 2020), I was the only person wearing a mask.

70+ people crowded together in a room, talking loudly for several hours.

I wore an FFP3 (equivalent to N99) for the entire duration, but over such a long period I doubt its effectiveness. I guess I'll see this weekend when I take my next lateral flow test.

Hardly anybody seems to care about Covid anymore, only 1-2% are now masking in London, many people don't isolate and just carry on as if everything is back to normal. This, despite 2 million cases (and growing) of Long Covid, alongside waning immunity, and the new variants which are said to favour infection of the lungs (unlike the earlier Omicron) and are triggering yet another new wave of cases and hospitalisations.

I sometimes feel like I'm living in a different reality to most other people. I mean, sure, life has to go on. I don't want a return to lockdowns. But we can't just pretend this virus doesn't exist. The rapid disappearance of masks, and the general attitudes among the public are just bizarre to me.
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

We are still doing a lot of mask-wearing here in the part of California where I live. I doubt that is true across the state. I notice that areas heavily traveled by tourists are the worst. Working class neighborhood commercial enterprises are very good about wearing masks, as are medical establishments.

What I came here to post:

New Imaging Technique Starkly Reveals the Source of Long COVID in The Lungs
by Tessa Koumoundouros
June 30, 2022

Extract::
(Science Alert) While COVID vaccines have saved millions of lives globally by reducing the overall severity of the disease, nearly one in ten of those recovered are still ending up with ongoing symptoms after the initial illness has passed.
….
Frustratingly, even long COVID patients describing breathing-related problems are showing normal results on standard clinical breathing tests, says respirologist Michael Nicholson from St. Joseph's Health Care London.
But a new imaging technique has now clearly revealed the source of the breathing problem.

"For those who are symptomatic post-COVID, even if they hadn't had a severe enough infection to be hospitalized, we are seeing this abnormality in the exchange of oxygen across the alveolar membrane into the red blood cells," says Western University medical biophysicist Grace Parraga.

"What we saw on the MRI was that the transition of the oxygen into the red blood cells was depressed in these symptomatic patients who had had COVID-19, compared to healthy volunteers."
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/new-imagi ... look-like
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
Ken_J
Posts: 241
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 5:25 pm

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by Ken_J »

wjfox wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 3:12 pm ... I was the only person wearing a mask.

...I sometimes feel like I'm living in a different reality to most other people. I mean, sure, life has to go on. I don't want a return to lockdowns. But we can't just pretend this virus doesn't exist. The rapid disappearance of masks, and the general attitudes among the public are just bizarre to me.
I went to get my driver ID renewed, my car registered, and car inspected (3 different locations) only ever saw 1-2 people at each location wearing a mask like I was. mostly elderly folks with walkers, and people of asian descent.

For so many people it's become, wasn't it a crazy time back then. while they pass it around to each other for the 3-4 time, who knows because nobody checks if they have it anymore. They've had the vaccine so it's just a seasonal cold now.

I'm still kinda feeling like rooting for the virus and maybe monkey pox too. we need to thin the willfully ignorant a bit out of our world. I wouldn't mind it making it's way through the supreme court right about now either.
User avatar
erowind
Posts: 544
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 5:42 am

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by erowind »

Covid seriously concerns me long term, I don’t want numerological issues by the time I’m in my 40s if I’m unlucky enough to get it half a dozen times by then.

But monkeypox terrifies me. I’m diagnosed with contact dermatitis and am fairly sure i’ve had eczema. There’s a non-insignificant chance, that if I get monkeypox I would die or otherwise be left with third degree burn type scars and or go blind ;-;

See, monkeypox only has an ~1% death rate, but of the people in that 1% group a large proportion are people who have prexisting skin conditions and or are immunocompromised
User avatar
raklian
Posts: 1747
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 4:46 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by raklian »

Everyone here is right to be concerned about the long term consequences of Covid.

To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »





Post Reply