StrangeSox

This isn't surprising but it's confirmation of what seemed pretty obvious. The President has said publicly for months that he wants less testing, so his appointees have pushed these once highly regarded agencies to comply.

We fully remodeled our basement this past spring/summer It immediately became an 800 sqft playroom rather than something cool

There are a few new platforms. The TWiV episode I just posted goes into depth on them first with Dr. Griffin at the start and then with the conference call review starting 1 hour in. If I remember correctly, mRNA is the platform that's never been successfully deployed in humans but would be a big breakthrough for future rapid development. The problem with mRNA is that it's fragile and requires -70C storage temps for most of the distribution chain. Probably ok in most of the US, but it's more expensive, and it's a non-starter in poorer countries. The other platform that's worked for horse vaccinations (again, IIRC), but not for people yet was a simple DNA-based one. The huge upside to that is that it can survive at room temp for a year. For SARS-Cov2-2/Covid-19, we should be hoping that multiple early leading candidates hit because the production capacity is going to be a huge, huge bottleneck.

I also recapped a recent TWiV that had a detailed review of a recent call with 8 of the top 9 vaccine candidates. Another good TWiV https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-663/ Daniel Griffin's clinical update right out of the gate provides information on: -big spike in younger people after schools open (duh) --dying teachers --young people can become infected and transmit (duh) including rates of hospitalization, long-term care, and death for young people -Testing and false positives; how to handle, how to reduce (retest!) --Developing an online calculator to see outcomes from # of tests, how many people, specificity, frequency, etc. to prevent X number of infections --Rapid test centers opening up --NY state covering screening testing for COVID for the individual still -Vaccines --Reviews typical vaccine study length before licensure (1-4 years) and the potential risks of EUA'ing any of the potential candidates (let's be real, nobody is waiting around until late 2022 when the full Phase 3 trial studies are completed) --Thorough primer on the various vaccine platforms out there --Statistical significance/power for the trials will need ~30k people and 200 infections --Vaccine risk assessment, and balancing the risk of COVID-19 and what the vaccine side effects might be -Long-haulers --This isn't a short-term illness for a decent minority of people --More people developing migraine-like headaches Alan Dove goes deep on a media conference call with 8 of the 9 leading vaccine candidate companies, recapping where they're at, what they're doing, what they're looking for, when we can expect preliminary information and what some end results might be. AstraZeneca was the only one not present and Alan speculates that it's because they didn't want to get asked a whole bunch of questions about their paused trial that they couldn't answer and would take the majority of the time of the call. -Not out-right stated, but seems like there's at least some behind-the-scenes collaboration -All 8 are running "neck-and-neck" and following similar standards -Big, important one: their primary endpoint is prevention or mitigation of disease, not infection --Threshold is 80% effective at prevention/mitigation of disease --We could very well end up like the annual flu vaccine, that only works 30% of the time to prevent infection, but is 80% effective in reducing disease impact --That means there will still be a whole lotta spread going on out there, even after many or even most of us are vaccinated. Adjust our expectations accordingly. A vaccinated healthcare worker may now just be assymptomatic and spread to patients. We will still need massive testing. --Wasn't covered on call/TWiV of what counts as "serious" disease but it should be available in the trial info online -Distribution chains --Everyone is expecting EUA at some point as they go for final approval, which likely won't come until 2022. --Possible EUA by end of year, maybe --Some of these (especially mRNA) do need -70C or -20C in the distribution chain up to the final distributor to the pharmacy/clinic, where it would then be fridge-stable for a day or two at least. ----These are conservative estimates from manufacturers, hope to test and prove that they're ok at higher temps, regular refridge ----Protein-based ones are all refridge-grade (like flu) ----Innovio has a platform they're trying for COVID on that can be stored at 37C for two months and 25C for a year (fantastic for poorer countries), but we haven't gotten DNA vaccines to work for people yet (boo) --Almost all of these expect 2 doses, 3-4 weeks apart --Many of the manufacturers are ramping up to produce 100M doses a year. That means 50M vaccinated a year per manufacturer. One of them that already does flu is targeting 1B/year. --Multi-dose vials will be initial shipments, which means you need a trained immunizer to mix and dose properly (problem in poorer countries) --No cross-testing of the various vaccine candidates right now (what happens if I get more than one vaccine?) --Our vaccine database/tracking sucks horribly -Enrollments --Pfizer at 25k enrolled already (updated: they've gotten 30k and now plan to expand to 44k) --Moderna at 21k already, but slowing down to hit demographic targets --Efficacy clock starts 10 days after second dose That's just the first 1.5 hours or so, skipping over the let's say standard liberal critiques of the GOP being an anti-science party and the damage that can do to our society. also lol at the two of them that have "gamer" chairs instead of actual good office chairs

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/health/covid-moderna-vaccine.html?smid=tw-share Moderna Shares the Blueprint for Its Coronavirus Vaccine Trial edit: I have no idea why this is nesting the quotes but they're all from the same article. Short story: Moderna will likely have initial efficacy results in late December. Don't expect everyone to be able to get a vaccine until late summer 2021 if everything goes well.

This is of young people who were hospitalized, but still not good

They also gave up what should have been a very easy game-winning TD that the Lions RB just dropped.

Seems bad The long term damage to the CDC and FDA and the public's trust in those institutions is going to be really, really bad.

UIUC had a bad opening, but their testing and contain seems to have quickly improved things?

Surface sanitization doesn't seem to be the primary risk factor, though. It's been in an indoor space for longer periods of time, especially if people aren't wearing masks and if they're talking. That is what makes restaurants and bars so bad. Long periods in the same indoor space with your mask off and probably lots of talking. For sure. The states can't just print money like the federal government can. I get why a lot of state and local governments are caving on these measures; they need the tax revenues and the businesses need the cash. Ultimately the failure lies at the feet of the federal government, which seems content to let everything collapse ever since the DOW went back up.

"willing to dine indoors during a pandemic" is going to correlate strongly with other high-risk behaviors, but still, this has been painfully obvious since before Illinois rushed to Phase 4 to get bars and restaurants opened up (and then yelling at everyone in their 20's for going out)

seems bad, imo