Tag: vaccines

DOD Awards $104 Million for Procurement of Syringes in Support of U.S. COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign

On August 4, the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Acquisition Task Force (JATF), in support of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), awarded $104 million in contracts to procure syringes and safety needles, enabling the nationwide administration of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved COVID-19 vaccine, once one is available. The syringes and safety needles are critical to the nation’s COVID-19 vaccination strategy, providing a total of 500 million safety syringes over a 12-month period, with more than 134 million of the total number delivered by the end of 2020.

The syringes and safety needles will be placed into the SNS so they will be readily available to quickly and efficiently vaccinate the U.S. population once a safe and efficacious COVID-19 vaccine is developed. This procurement is the latest in a series of recent contracts highlighting a collaborative “whole-of-government” approach in response to the COVID-19 threat.

The Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND) partnered with HHS and the Army Contracting Command – Aberdeen Proving Ground (ACC-APG), to select and award contracts to six companies: Duopross Meditech Corporation ($48 million), Cardinal Health Inc. ($15 million), Gold Coast Medical Supply, LP ($14 million), HTL STREFA Inc. ($12 million), Quality Impact, Inc. ($9 million), and Medline Industries, Inc. ($6 million). The companies represent a mix of large and small medical product manufacturers and distributors.

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New COVID-19 restrictions will be needed for anti-vaxxers

To anti-vaxxers, I have one message: our tolerance for your wilful ignorance is over. We cannot afford, morally or economically, to give any ground to those who choose not to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Let me be clear. I’m not advocating that we vaccinate people against their will. That would be wrong. We must ensure that the safety of our community is the number one priority. That means that participation in everyday life cannot put others at risk. If you do not want to be vaccinated against COVID-19, you ought to bear the consequences of that decision.

As a community, we should consider to what extent we allow organisations to prevent those who object to being vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter their premises, participate in their activities and, in some circumstances, seek their employment.

Governments have gone some way to doing this by implementing policies such as withholding family tax benefits and preventing children from being accepted into childcare unless vaccinations are proven. Further restrictions would be a natural extension of these policies.

Restaurants could be allowed the right to refuse entry to those who are not vaccinated against COVID-19. Businesses, especially those involved in the care or service of vulnerable communities, might be allowed the right to refuse employment to those without a COVID-19 vaccination. Organisers of mass gatherings could deny the sale of tickets on this basis.

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Vaccinate or Terminate – Mandatory Vaccination As Workplace Policy

The discovery, testing and mass deployment of a COVID-19 vaccine are welcome developments in potentially ending the Coronavirus pandemic. A safe and widely available vaccine will also allow employees to return to the physical workplace. The benefits of an inoculated (and presumably safe and healthy) workforce are obvious. Employees immune from COVID-19 will experience fewer absences because they are healthy and so are the people that they care for (or that care for them). Offices and other facilities will avoid pandemic-related closures and disruptions associated with deep cleaning and other infection control measures. Inoculated individuals will be able to travel and participate in service, customer and other people-facing positions without fear of becoming ill or perpetuating an outbreak and making others ill. And while less obvious, incidents of mental health disorders and other very real but debilitating anxiety-related illnesses should wane in the face of actual progress in fighting the pandemic.  If a fully or near fully inoculated workforce could materially reduce and even eliminate the direct threat the pandemic poses to the workplace, it seems natural to implement a mandatory vaccination program as soon as a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available – after health care workers, first responders and others at high risk are vaccinated – to ensure employee health and safety.

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Federal Government and Yale Are Holding Clinical Trials on How Best to ‘Persuade’ Americans to Take COVID-19 Vaccines

The Federal Government and Yale are currently holding clinical trials on how best to persuade Americans into taking the Fauci-Gates COVID-19 vaccines.

The study is published at the government website on clinical trials.

The options they are studying include shame and anger techniques:

Other: Control message
Other: Baseline message
Other: Personal freedom message
Other: Economic freedom message
Other: Self-interest message
Other: Community interest message
Other: Economic benefit message
Other: Guilt message
Other: Embarrassment message
Other: Anger message
Other: Trust in science message
Other: Not bravery message

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The Public Health Legacy of the 1976 Swine Flu Outbreak

The Swine Flu Program was marred by a series of logistical problems ranging from the production of the wrong vaccine strain to a confrontation over liability protection to a temporal connection of the vaccine and a cluster of deaths among an elderly population in Pittsburgh. The most damning charge against the vaccination program was that the shots were correlated with an increase in the number of patients diagnosed with an obscure neurological disease known as Guillain–Barré syndrome (1).

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Red Flags Soar As Big Pharma Will Be Exempt From COVID-19 Vaccine Liability Claims

Last week we warned readers to be cautious about new COVID-19 vaccines, highlighting how key parts of the clinical trials are being skipped as big pharma will not be held accountable for adverse side effects for administering the experimental drugs.

A senior executive from AstraZeneca, Britain’s second-largest drugmaker, told Reuters that his company was just granted protection from all legal action if the company’s vaccine led to damaging side effects.

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AstraZeneca to be exempt from coronavirus vaccine liability claims in most countries

AstraZeneca has been granted protection from future product liability claims related to its COVID-19 vaccine hopeful by most of the countries with which it has struck supply agreements, a senior executive told Reuters.

With 25 companies testing their vaccine candidates on humans and getting ready to immunise hundred millions of people once the products are shown to work, the question of who pays for any claims for damages in case of side effects has been a tricky point in supply negotiations.

“This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in … four years the vaccine is showing side effects,” Ruud Dobber, a member of Astra’s senior executive team, told Reuters.

“In the contracts we have in place, we are asking for indemnification. For most countries it is acceptable to take that risk on their shoulders because it is in their national interest,” he said, adding that Astra and regulators were making safety and tolerability a top priority.

Dobber would not name the countries.

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Vaccine developer says people must wear masks and socially distance even after vaccine is available

Several companies are working as quickly as possible to develop a safe and effective vaccine, which has been viewed by some as necessary for lockdowns to end and schools to reopen. While a vaccine may significantly reduce the risk of serious disease from the novel coronavirus, social distancing and face masks may still be a part of life, said vaccine developer Maria Elena Bottazzi.

“They automatically are going to say, ‘oh great, I’m just going to get my little vaccine, and I can go back and do exactly the things I was doing last year,'” Bottazzi told Business Insider. “That is absolutely not true.”

Ideally, Bottazzi said, a vaccine would give sterilizing immunity, meaning it would totally prevent people from becoming infected. Many vaccines don’t reach that level of effectiveness, however, and only reduce the chance of developing severe symptoms of a particular disease.

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