Tag: vaccines

COVID-19 vaccine trial participants report aches, fevers and chills

Some participants for leading COVID-19 vaccine trials have reported experiencing grueling side effects after receiving the shot — such as high fever, body aches, headaches and exhaustion.

Five participants — three in Moderna’s study and two in Pfizer’s late-stage trials — said the uncomfortable side effects usually went away within a day, but some were surprised by how severe they were, CNBC reported.

“If this proves to work, people are going to have to toughen up,” one of the Moderna participants, a North Carolina woman in her 50s who declined to be identified, told the outlet.

“The first dose is no big deal. And then the second dose will definitely put you down for the day for sure. … You will need to take a day off after the second dose.”

She said she didn’t experience a fever but had a bad migraine that left her exhausted and struggling to focus, the outlet reported. But the next day, she woke up feeling better after taking Excedrin.

While she was uncomfortable, the side effects outweigh the risks of becoming infected with the virus, she said.

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Engineering Contagion: UPMC, Corona-Thrax And “The Darkest Winter”

The recently obtained documents reveal that the BSL-3 lab that is part of UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research is conducting eyebrow-raising research involving combining SARS-CoV-2 with Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax infection. Per the documents, anthrax is being genetically engineered by a researcher, whose name was redacted in the release, so that it will express the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is the part of the coronavirus that allows it to gain access into human cells. The researcher asserts that “the [genetically engineered anthrax/SARS-CoV-2 hybrid] can [be] used as a host strain to make SARS-CoV-2 recombinant S protein vaccine,” and the creation of said vaccine is the officially stated purpose of the research project. The documents were produced by the University of Pittsburgh’s Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), which held an emergency meeting on June 22nd of this year to “discuss specific protocols involving research with the coronavirus,” which included a vote on the aforementioned proposal.

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Covid-19 origins, the Wuhan lab, US funding, and vaccine connection

Starting in 2014, the National Institutes of Health granted millions of dollars in U.S. tax money to a “global environmental health nonprofit” called EcoHealth Alliance based in New York City.

The grant was for an eleven-year-long project entitled: “Understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence.” It aimed to study coronavirus in bats in China to determine which strains had the greatest risk of spillover to humans. (In other words, in hopes of preventing something like the Covid-19 pandemic and/or providing quick mitigation.)

A total of  $3,748,715 was given for the project from 2014-2019.

EcoHealth Alliance’s partners on the taxpayer-funded project included scientist at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology also “received assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations.”

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is located in the area of China where scientists believe the Covid-19 outbreak originated. Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the virus was somehow released from the lab, either by accident or intentionally.

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Scientists are working on vaccines that spread like a disease. What could possibly go wrong?

Once a COVID-19 vaccine is approved for public use, officials around the world will face the monumental challenge of vaccinating billions of people, a logistical operation rife with thorny ethical questions. What if instead of orchestrating complicated and resource-intensive campaigns to vaccinate humans against emerging infectious diseases like COVID-19, we could instead stop the zoonotic diseases that sometimes leap from animals to people at their source? A small, but growing number of scientists think it’s possible to exploit the self-propagating properties of viruses and use them to spread immunity instead of disease. Can we beat viruses like SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus, at their own game?

A virus that confers immunity throughout an animal population as it spreads in the wild could theoretically stop a zoonotic spillover event from happening, snuffing out the spark that could ignite the next pandemic. If the wild rats that host the deadly Lassa virus, for example, are vaccinated, the risks of a future outbreak among humans could be reduced. For at least 20 years, scientists have been experimenting with such self-spreading vaccines, work that continues to this day, and which has gained the attention of the US military.

For obvious reasons, public and scientific interest in vaccines is incredibly high, including in self-spreading vaccines, as they could be effective against zoonotic threats. The biologists Scott Nuismer and James Bull generated fresh media attention to self-spreading vaccines over the summer after publishing an article in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. But the subsequent reporting on the topic gives short shrift to the potentially significant downsides to releasing self-spreading vaccines into the environment.

Self-spreading vaccines could indeed entail serious risks, and the prospect of using them raises challenging questions.

Who decides, for instance, where and when a vaccine should be released? Once released, scientists will no longer be in control of the virus. It could mutate, as viruses naturally do. It may jump species. It will cross borders. There will be unexpected outcomes and unintended consequences. There always are.

While it may turn out to be technically feasible to fight emerging infectious diseases like COVID-19, AIDS, Ebola, and Zika with self-spreading viruses, and while the benefits may be significant, how does one weigh those benefits against what may be even greater risks?

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Say What?! CDC director just testified masks might be more effective than vaccine at fighting COVID-19

First, Don’t wear a mask! They won’t help you. In fact, they might even kill you (because you’re too stupid to know how to wear one safely).

Then, Wear your mask! It’s the law! It still won’t help you, but it will save everyone around you!

And now (from the head of the CDC no less, in testimony before Congress Wednesday), Wear your mask! It’s the only thing guaranteed to save you!

“I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine, because the immunogenicity may be 70%. And if I don’t get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me. This face mask will.” — CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield

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Moderna expects to make 20 million doses of coronavirus vaccine by 2020 end

Moderna said on Friday it was on track to produce 20 million doses of its experimental coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year, while maintaining its goal of readying 500 million to 1 billion doses in 2021.

Vaccines and treatments are seen as essential in controlling the Covid-19 pandemic that has shown no signs of slowing and killed over 944,000 people worldwide.

A handful of vaccines, including those from Pfizer and AstraZeneca, are also being tested in large studies.

Moderna had enrolled 25,296 participants out of a planned 30,000 in its late-stage study as of Wednesday.

The company is working with Switzerland’s Lonza Group and Spain’s Laboratorios Farmacéuticos Rovi to make the vaccine outside the United States.

Moderna has a vaccine supply deal in place with the U.S. for 100 million doses, and has finished advanced talks with the European Union for the vaccine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention anticipates that 35 million to 45 million doses of vaccines from the first two companies to receive authorization will be available in the United States by the end of this year.

Moderna plans to seek emergency authorization for its vaccine’s use in high-risk groups if it proves to be at least 70% effective, its chief executive officer told Reuters earlier this week.

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