- Millions of people worldwide have had one shot of two-dose COVID-19 vaccines.
- Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are likely 80% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 after one dose.
- A single AstraZeneca shot is probably at least 70% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19. //
Stephen Evans, a professor of medical statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a former drug-safety committee member at the European Medicines Agency, helped Insider break down the data. //
Percentage efficacy for vaccines refers to the proportion of people that get full protection after a vaccine. With 80% efficacy, 80% of people have full protection, and 20% don't.
For those who get full protection the first time around, the second shot improves the quality of the immune response and its durability.
For the people who don't get full protection with the first shot, some will get full protection after the second dose. Some people won't ever get full protection from a vaccine because their immune system doesn't respond at all. //
A UK study found Pfizer or AstraZeneca's vaccine cut COVID-19 infections with symptoms by 72% after one dose, and protection probably held up for 10 weeks. Protection from Pfizer's vaccine rose to 90% after two doses. The study hasn't been peer-reviewed.
A US study of essential workers found that a single dose of Pfizer of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines were 80% effective against all coronavirus infections from 14 days.
A Scottish study found that a single dose of Pfizer's vaccine was 91% effective against hospitalization at 28 to 34 days following vaccination. One dose of AstraZeneca's vaccine was 88% effective against hospital admissions after the same time period.
A UK study found that a single dose of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca's vaccine cut spread of symptomatic COVID-19 within a household by up to 50%.
A South Korean study found one dose of Pfizer's vaccine was 89.7% effective at preventing COVID-19 in South Koreans aged over 60, at least two weeks after vaccination. AstraZeneca's vaccine was 86% effective at preventing COVID-19 after one dose. The severity of illness that the shots protected against was unclear — generally they're more effective at preventing COVID-19 infections that caused hospitalization or death.
An English study found that a single dose of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca's vaccine was about 80% effective at preventing hospitalization in people over 70-years-old. Protection lasted for at least 6 weeks, including against the Alpha variant first identified in the UK.
Pretend it didn't happen – expert advice on how to behave after receiving a single dose of any of the Covid-19 vaccines. //
When the immune system first encounters a vaccine, it activates two important types of white blood cell. First up are the plasma B cells, which primarily focus on making antibodies. Unfortunately, this cell type is short-lived, so although your body might be swimming in antibodies within just a few weeks, without the second shot this is often followed by a rapid decline.
Then there are the T cells, each of which is specifically tailored to identify a particular pathogen and kill it. Some of these, memory T cells, are able to linger in the body for decades until they stumble upon their target – meaning immunity from vaccines or infections can sometimes last a lifetime. But crucially, you usually won't have many of this cell type until the second meeting.
The booster dose is a way of re-exposing the body to the antigens – the molecules on pathogens that trigger the immune system – to initiate part two of the response. "You've kicked in all this fancy stuff," says Altmann. "So, once you've had your boost you'll have a higher frequency of memory T cells and ditto to some extent for the size of the pool of memory B cells you'll have. They'll also be making higher quality antibodies."
On second exposure to the same vaccine or pathogen, the B cells that remain from before are able to rapidly divide and create a menacing throng of descendants, leading to a second spike in the amount of antibodies circulating.
The second dose also initiates the process of "B cell maturation", which involves selecting the immature ones with the best receptors for binding to a particular pathogen. This happens while they're still in the bone marrow – where white blood cells are made – and afterwards they travel to the spleen to finish developing. This means B cells are not only more numerous afterwards, but the antibodies they produce are better targeted.
However, the number of confirmed cases in Chile, Turkey, and Pakistan, which chose to receive the Chinese Sinovac vaccine, has increased.
Chile administered nearly 9 million doses of the Sinovac vaccines in February, with an average of 47 doses per 100 people, making it the country with the highest vaccination rate in South America. However, the number of positive test results recorded in Chile rose instead of fell, and a new high of 7,626 cases was recorded in a single day on March 26, leading to a tight supply of hospital beds and a recent lockdown of the capital city of Santiago.
Turkey started to administer Sinovac vaccines in mid-January and at least eight million people have been injected with the vaccine, accounting for more than 10 percent of the population. But their case numbers also rebounded in late February, with 37,303 new cases recorded on March 30, the highest single-day figure since the outbreak on March 11 last year. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on April 2 that there would be a curfew during the weekends throughout the month of Ramadan.
In addition, Pakistan, which has been using the Chinese vaccine since early February, is now experiencing a third wave of the pandemic, with the national positivity ratio rising to 11 percent, the highest level since the outbreak. More than 20 cities have been “closed” due to the severity of the outbreak. //
Pakistani President Arif Alvi wrote on March 29 that he tested positive after receiving the first dose of a vaccine produced by the Chinese National Pharmaceutical Group Corp on March 15. Prior to that, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan also tested positive for the virus on March 18, two days after receiving his first dose of the vaccine manufactured by the same Chinese company. //
Earlier, former head of the National Institute of Health of Peru, Ernesto Bustamante, said in a local TV program that Sinopharm’s Wuhan strain vaccine had only 33 percent effectiveness, while the Beijing strain vaccine had 11.5 percent. Sinovac was also reported to be only 50.4 percent effective according to Brazil’s data. The frequent outbreaks of defective vaccines and fake vaccines in China over the years are even more common and shocking.
“Today I issued an executive order prohibiting the use of so-called COVID-19 vaccine passports, Gov. DeSantis announced in a tweet linking to his executive order, which he says serves as a stop-gap measure while Florida’s legislature crafts legislation to codify the elements of his order.
The order prohibits Florida’s government from issuing “standardized documentation” certifying, and from publishing, a person’s vaccine status: //
Likewise, businesses are prohibited from denying access and service to patrons who do not provide proof they’ve been vaccinated: //
But it goes past the practical aspects of all this. Privacy issues are a big concern. Why should a business be able to demand protected, private medical information in order to sell you a product, especially when there a myriad of reasons why you might be “safe” but still not have the vaccine? That’s not allowed on any other front, and it should not be allowed here. ///
It is problematic to be requiring a vaccine that is still regarded as "experimental" and has only been given an "emergency use authorization", not full FDA approval. The initial study that was the foundation for the EUA still has 18-20 months yet before it is completed.
On top of that, requiring individuals to provide private health details to private citizens or businesses against their will is a violation of HIPAA law and regulations.
Are Americans supposed to accept that the government, private employers, and businesses such as airlines and Costco may stop you and demand that you show your COVID-19 papers? //
Currently, the COVID-19 vaccines are not U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved, but authorized only for emergency use. As an investigational product, the statute governing emergency use authorizations provides that the recipient be advised of his or her option to accept or refuse administration of the vaccine, something a DC District court considered in a 2003 case that ruled against forcing soldiers to take the then-experimental anthrax vaccine //
We have a constitutionally implied fundamental right to privacy; various guarantees in the Bill of Rights “have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance…creat[ing] “zones of privacy.” Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 484 (1965). The right to privacy encompasses everything from what we do in the privacy of our own bedrooms, to how we educate our children, and to what we choose to insert into our bodies.
The right to privacy also incorporates a right to be left alone, a concept dating as far back as an 1890 Harvard Law Review Article by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, in which they noted that our laws are universal and eternal, “grow[ing] to meet the new demands of society.” As time passed, “[g]radually the scope of [] legal rights broadened; and now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life, — the right to be let alone; the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges…” //
Even the World Health Organization resists a COVID-19 vaccination passport, saying that “At the present time, do not introduce requirements of proof of vaccination or immunity for international travel as a condition of entry as there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination in reducing transmission and limited availability of vaccines. Proof of vaccination should not exempt international travelers from complying with other travel risk reduction measures.”
And what of HIPAA? The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act applies to “covered entities” such as health-care providers, health-care clearinghouses, or other organizations that would be involved in the transmission of protected health information, or PHI. Covered entities cannot share your information — but you can. //
COVID-19 passports are government surveillance on steroids. COVID-19 has seen courts sanction unprecedented abrogation of our fundamental civil rights, in some ways that may leave permanent scars. September 11, 2001 led to the PATRIOT Act, which in retrospect a growing number of constitutional conservatives now decry, for its expansions have been monstrous.
Americans should not so lightly give up their liberty for commercial expediency, elite orthodoxy, or even illusory notions of safety. If we do, what downward ratchet on liberty will the next crisis bring?
Chris Cuomo and Leana Wen appeared together to bat around an absolutely insane idea, and it shows just how far the left in this country are willing to go to exact their will. In this case, Wen says that vaccinations should be tied to “freedoms,” denying them to those who haven’t yet gotten the shot.
I think they call this saying the quiet part out loud.
“We have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status because otherwise if everything is reopened, then what is the carrot going to be...Biden admin needs to come out a lot bolder & say if you’re vaccinated... here’s all these freedoms that you have..” //
There’s a lot of irony in a “my body, my choice” proponent saying this. Remember, Wen is the former head of Planned Parenthood. Her entire schtick is that people should have such bodily autonomy that they can kill their own child if they want.
After warning for months that vaccinated people should still be cautious in order to not infect others, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests they may not be at much risk of transmitting the coronavirus.
“Vaccinated people do not carry the virus — they don’t get sick,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday. That’s “not just in the clinical trials, but it’s also in real-world data.”
Walensky was referring to a new CDC study that suggests those fully inoculated with the vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer don’t transmit the virus. Researchers looked at how the shots protected nearly 4,000 health-care workers, first responders, and other essential workers toiling in eight U.S. locations against the virus and more-contagious variants. Following a single dose of either vaccine, the participants’ risk of infection was reduced by 80 percent, and that figure jumped to 90 percent after the second dose. Without infection, people are unable to spread the virus. The results are similar to what scientists saw in clinical trials for the vaccines, which found that two doses of either two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of around 95 percent.
After warning for months that vaccinated people should still be cautious in order to not infect others, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests they may not be at much risk of transmitting the coronavirus.
“Vaccinated people do not carry the virus — they don’t get sick,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday. That’s “not just in the clinical trials, but it’s also in real-world data.”
Walensky was referring to a new CDC study that suggests those fully inoculated with the vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer don’t transmit the virus. Researchers looked at how the shots protected nearly 4,000 health-care workers, first responders, and other essential workers toiling in eight U.S. locations against the virus and more-contagious variants. Following a single dose of either vaccine, the participants’ risk of infection was reduced by 80 percent, and that figure jumped to 90 percent after the second dose. Without infection, people are unable to spread the virus. The results are similar to what scientists saw in clinical trials for the vaccines, which found that two doses of either two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of around 95 percent.
Scott Morefield
@SKMorefield
·
Mar 29, 2021
Here, President Biden begs states that have lifted mask mandates to put them back in place. Based on his assumed 'logic,' you'd think that states that have lifted mandates or never had them were drowning in dead bodies and overcrowded hospitals. Is that the case?
THREAD:
Wait two weeks, they always say. Well, Texas ended its statewide mandate well over two weeks ago. By now, hospitals and funeral homes should be overwhelmed, right? Nope, not even close.
South Dakota never had a mask mandate and is widely considered the most maskless state in the union. Yet, their recent curve is remarkably flat (this is similar to surrounding Montana and North Dakota as well). It's almost like viruses are gonna virus, regardless of what we do.
Georgia never had a statewide mask mandate at all. At this point, things there should be pretty close to an apocalypse that makes "The Walking Dead" (minus the zombies) look like child's play. Or not.
Tennessee, my state, never had a mask mandate either. Sure, we had something of a casedemic, but things also never got close to getting out of control - and the curve has been more than flattened. How on earth did this happen without a statewide mask mandate?
On the other hand, masked-up New York is leading in new cases and hasn't really had much of a downswing. It seems like if masks were the answer, New York would be doing better, doesn't it?
Same with mask-loving New Jersey. These two states (New York and NJ), by the way, also LEAD THE COUNTRY in deaths per million. People always say that without masks things would be worse, but truly, how much worse could it get than #1 and #2? //
RiverRev
19 hours ago
This illustrates my assumed untold truth in this pandemic: we cannot single anyone out, ie, discriminate; so all of us must suffer. We must all wear masks because we cannot single out the diabetic, or hypertensive, or obese one. God forbid that COVID affects any ethnic group over another! It is sheer idiocy that we must all suffer because we cannot be honest and tell the old, sick, and infirm to mask up while the rest of us work through this.
‘When I saw what happened in New York City, almost over-running of our healthcare systems, and that’s when it became very clear that the decision we made on January 10 to go all out and develop a vaccine, may have been the best decision that I’ve ever made with regard to intervention as the director of the institute,’ Fauci said.
Fauci’s remarks seemed to gloss over the key role played by pharmaceutical companies and Operation Warp Speed – the Trump administration’s program to manufacture, test and deliver vaccines to the public in record time.
Yes, I’m sure no one had thought of needing a vaccine for a deadly, global disease before Fauci’s brilliance came onto the scene. Truly, we should build statues of this man and order a new stock of emotive candles.
To be clear, Fauci had absolutely jack to do with making the decision to start developing or developing a vaccine. To the extent that Trump deserves credit, and he does, it’s because he took the lead to negotiate Operation Warp Speed, which incentivized private companies to research and develop the vaccines we now have on the market. Past that, those individual companies did all the work, which is a testament to our free market system and its benefits. Compare the United States’ speed to a vaccine and our distribution with that of Europe, for example.
What Fauci is trying to do here is take credit for something he had almost nothing to do with. Perhaps he suggested in a meeting at some point that a vaccine would be needed. Again, that probably occurred to a dozen other people in the room as well, but it certainly wasn’t “his” decision to begin development, and he had nothing to do with anything that happened after that as well.
Let me be clear: We should have taken efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus. We cannot, however, jump to the conclusion that all mitigation efforts were effective when, in fact, many are not. The thing about science is that it is never absolute. Science changes, evolves, and progresses. “Settled-science” is not a thing. Questioning data coming from a scientific debate does not make one “anti-science.” Had we simply provided for those who were over the age of 60 and/or had a pre-existing condition we could have avoided the majority of the negative consequences from which we have suffered.
Claims they remove 99% of viruses are unproven; cheaper air filters are more effective. //
The pandemic has given more urgency to come up with standards, and members are working on them, but Owen says the process could take years.
In the meantime, Zaatari has a simple message for school administrators and parents calling her for advice: stick to the basics. “It’s so cheap to use current proven technologies,” she says. “There’s so much misinformation.”
Byron York
@ByronYork
Takeaways from this NYT story: 1) Trump's leadership on vaccine was vastly better than anyone in Europe. 2) When it came to a vaccine, Britain was smart to leave the EU. 3) On 1 and 2, elite opinion was dreadfully wrong.
The New York Times
@nytimes
The U.S. and Britain have sped ahead of Europe in terms of vaccinations. What went wrong? https://nyti.ms/3vLz5w4 //
The bloc was comparatively slow to negotiate contracts with drugmakers. Its regulators were cautious and deliberative in approving some vaccines. Europe also bet on vaccines that did not pan out or, significantly, had supply disruptions. And national governments snarled local efforts in red tape. //
The United States basically went into business with the drugmakers, spending much more heavily to accelerate vaccine development, testing and production…“They assumed that simply contracting to acquire doses would be enough,” recalled Dr. Slaoui, whom President Donald J. Trump hired to speed the vaccine development. “In fact what was very important was to be a full, active partner in the development and the manufacturing of the vaccine. And to do so very early.” The result in Europe is a stumbling inoculation effort that has led to political fallout, with leaders pointing fingers over why some of the world’s richest countries, home to factories that churn out vast quantities of vaccine, cannot keep pace with other wealthy nations in injecting its people.
But as a leading indicator, this notion that people are getting out again, traveling, and aggressively living life, is extremely heartening. In fact, it just might be the perfect message for 2021, and one I'd encourage you to think about.
We're not just coming back. We're reclaiming what we lost -- stronger, better, and more robustly than before.
One has the right to ask if a policy that was unjustly and arbitrarily imposed upon the nation at great cost can be casually and arbitrarily changed to something else, then what was the rationale underpinning the decision in the first place? Not much, as it turns out. Here, I’d like to give a shout out to Sean Davis at the Federalist for the inspiration:
Sean Davis
@seanmdav
The New York Times told us last year in a hagiographic profile of a mid-level government bureaucrat that the idea came from a 14-year-old’s science project.
Jeffrey A Tucker
@jeffreyatucker
Wow, NYT, after a full year, admits this. https://nytimes.com/2021/03/16/health/coronavirus-schools-social-distance.html //
The origin of the six-foot distancing recommendation is something of a mystery. “It’s almost like it was pulled out of thin air,” said Linsey Marr, an expert on viral transmission at Virginia Tech University. //
We have undergone severe social and economic dislocation. The only places showing progress are those who decided to get about their lives and treat the sick as needed.
tsar becket adams
@BecketAdams
·
Mar 10, 2021
Replying to @BecketAdams
also, uh, long wait or not, those people are all getting the vaccine. so, yeah, that strikes me as pretty great. //
tsar becket adams
@BecketAdams
·
Mar 10, 2021
Replying to @BecketAdams
also, uh, long wait or not, those people are all getting the vaccine. so, yeah, that strikes me as pretty great. //
@Just “Mr. Shemp”
@presidentshemp
Replying to @jkbjournalist and @GovRonDeSantis
These were people who didn’t have to sign up? That is FANTASTIC. Wish we had that up here. I’d wait all day instead on 3 months.
7:28 PM · Mar 10, 2021
Tom Elliott
@tomselliott
Biden on when America might return to normal: “My hope is by this time next year” //
“I’ve been cautioned not to give an answer to that,” Biden says, again saying the quiet part out loud. Cautioned by who? Who’s telling him what to do? And shouldn’t he know that yes, obviously, one can’t give a definitive. But then his answer seems to have no connection to present reality, with him saying, “My hope is that by this time next year we’ll be back to normal or before that — my hope. But it depends upon if people continue to be smart”
Cuomo’s career was already finished because of another vastly more serious scandal that, coincidentally, is being buried by the media’s relentless focus on these salacious but ultimately trivial charges suddenly being levied by a couple of Democrat operatives—in the first instance almost three years after the fact. //
Cuomo’s career was already finished because of another vastly more serious scandal that, coincidentally, is being buried by the media’s relentless focus on these salacious but ultimately trivial charges suddenly being levied by a couple of Democrat operatives—in the first instance almost three years after the fact.
And this other more egregious scandal has the potential to blow up and encompass many more major party players.
I’m speaking, of course, about Cuomo’s March 25 order barring New York nursing homes from turning away patients diagnosed with COVID-19. //
- It turns out that three other Democrat governors whose states also experienced an extraordinarily high number of reported COVID-19 nursing-home fatalities also issued the exact same orders as Cuomo.
- The orders forcing nursing homes to accept patients diagnosed with COVID-19 issued by the quartet may wind up being responsible for an enormous proportion of the total number of reported U.S. deaths.
- Because of the way COVID-19 diagnoses have been incentivized by the government, those orders wound up raking in a fortune for nursing homes.
- Cuomo also signed a law passed by New York state’s Democrat-controlled legislature giving nursing homes immunity against civil liability from COVID-19 related lawsuits. //
It would have been tough for the media to keep ignoring Cuomo’s burgeoning nursing home scandal had Lindsey Boylan not given them those salacious but ultimately trivial three-year-old accusations of unwanted advances to start hyping instead. Likewise, if Charlotte Bennett hadn’t come along a few days later to help give the story legs.
And that nursing home scandal which, coincidentally, was so effectively buried by their stories had the potential to not only lead to criminal charges. It was likely to engulf three other major league Democrat politicians and expose just how much of the US official COVID-19 death tally was due to their actions.
The average number of fatalities suffered by states that imposed lockdowns last spring vs those that didn’t is also represented. And one important piece of information here is that states which locked down wound up with more reported COVID-19 fatalities on average than states that remained free.
Average COVID-19 Fatalities per million as of February 24, 2021:
Lockdown States: 1558
Free States: 1475