Biden gettin 'er done

Discussion in 'Coronavirus (COVID-19) News' started by ronv, Mar 2, 2021.

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  1. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  2. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Look at what the P.1 is doing in Brazil. If it explodes here, so much for herd immunity.
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/sao-paulo-shuts-down-raging-211751709.html
    Its potential for re-infecting people who have had the ancestral variant already, is estimated between 25% and 61%. This means, of 100 people who have had Covid-19 already and get exposed to the P.1, 25 to 61 catch Covid-19 again.
     
  3. ronv

    ronv Well-Known Member

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    Lets not complicate it with variants and just get to the root.

    Is there any evidence P1 escapes the vaccines any worse than the S. African variant?
     
  4. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    So far, even after the first dose. , infection rates for the two shot protocol are very low. So, gettin* to herd immunity should be earlier then anticipated. Still, Tex ass and other states that are removing the mask mandates and upping the chance for infecting kids who will be the last to get shots, will surly fk things up.
     
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  5. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    No it isn’t.....there are still many infected non symptomatic younger people who are untested and could easily cause a new strain and a return to higher rates. It happens with flu shots all the time,
     
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  6. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    This why masking needs to remain for quite a while, especially as businesses open up.
     
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  7. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Why shouldn't we "complicate" it with variants? The variants are upon us and most likely will entirely replace the ancestral strains. We are not the ones complicating matters. The virus is.

    ---------

    There is significant evidence that the P.1 escapes the natural immunity provided by an infection with the ancestral strains, more than any other variant of concern, given the huge rate of re-infection in the city of Manaus, where it originated.

    There is insufficient data on the matter of vaccines and the P.1 which of the three most prominent variants of concern (there are 7 others) is the least studied.

    The J&J vaccine did show some efficacy in Brazil but it is unclear how many of the participants were exposed to the P.1 - which only took the country by storm more recently. J&J did say that some of the infections were likely to have been by P.1 and the vaccine may not have lost a lot of efficacy against those.

    Brazil has approved the CoronaVac vaccine developed by Sinovac in cooperation with Instituto Butantan. There are no real life studies yet but it does seem like there was a drop in neutralizing antibodies by six fold regarding the new P.1 variant.

    The P.1 variant does have the E484K mutation that allows the South African variant to escape vaccines, so, likely the P.1 will behave in a similar way. Not worse, I'd expect, but similar. The P.1 has these main mutations: E484K, K417N/T, and N501Y. It has a total of 22 mutations, 10 of which in the spike protein.

    The problem is that not only the P.1 has the E484K, but it also has these two, K417N/T and N501Y, and BOTH make it more infectious (as they bind more easily to the host cell's receptors), which is why its infectiousness seems to be the highest of the three new variants. While the B.1.1.7 (UK Kent) and the B.1.351 (South Africa) are about 50% more infectious, the P.1 seems to be up to 220% more infectious.

    Yikes.

    Infections with the P.1 seem to be 1.1 times to 1.8 times more lethal than with the ancestral variants, but this is not certain, because it is so infectious that its emergence overwhelmed the Brazilian healthcare system so the researchers don't know if this is what caused more deaths, or the variant is more lethal, or both.

    Here, this is a paper with pretty much all we know about it, so far:

    https://github.com/CADDE-CENTRE/Nov...t/FINAL_P1_MANUSCRIPT_25-02-2021_combined.pdf
     
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  8. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Exactly. And I don't know why @giftdone keeps saying that the new variants should be less lethal. That's NOT what is happening. The B.1.1.7 UK Kent variant that is spreading in the United states is 30% to 70% more lethal. The P.1 may be (unconfirmed) 10% to 80% more lethal. Giftdone seems to WANT it to be this way (less lethal) and declares that it is just out of his own statement, with no base whatsoever in Virology data. None of the variants of concern have been shown to be less lethal. They are either just as lethal, or more lethal.

    Eventually in the future maybe the virus will lose lethality... but that's not what is happening, right now. Much the opposite.

    Sure, many viruses lose lethality as they evolve... but not all. Not all viruses behave the same way. The SARS-CoV-2 new variants appear to be more infectious AND more lethal. And this is easy to explain. The mutations in the spike protein make them more prone to attaching to the ACE2 receptors in human cells, therefore more agile to infect. It makes them more infectious... but also, this facility makes them cause a higher viral load, and we know that lethality correlates with viral load - the more viral load, the more serious the disease.

    In Manaus, Brazil, 76% of the population was already immune to the ancestral variants... the city seemed to have reached herd immunity threshold and new cases had dropped dramatically... then, suddenly, the P.1 variant hit. It is able to re-infect people who had already had Covid-19... and boom, there we go again.

    The idea of cancelling mask mandates and reopening all businesses at full capacity in Texas will INEVITABLY result in more infections. The more infections, the more mutations, because these mutations occur when the virus replicates. The more mutations, the more variants of concern will pop up.

    In America there is still a large contingent of people who have never been exposed to the virus. So dropping epidemiological containment measures too soon will predictably result in a fourth wave.

    It is incredible how these politicians won't learn... I predict that the virus will come back to bite the governor of Texas. We should learn with what is happening in Brazil right now.

    I just hope the P.1 doesn't get to be prevalent here. I hope that we vaccinate fast enough to prevent it. So far it is just a handful of cases in five states, but we know that we aren't sequencing enough samples, so likely it's already more than that.
     
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  9. ronv

    ronv Well-Known Member

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    Because you will confuse him.
    ---------

    So just to confirm.
    Will existing vaccines be effective against the P.1 variant?
    Yes, they absolutely should be. While vaccines have not yet been tested against the P.1 variant, both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have reported that their mRNA vaccines provide protection against the other two major variants of concern. On January 25, the companies confirmed that in their initial testing, there was no meaningful difference in how effective their vaccines were against the B.1.1.7 variant which originated in the U.K. — and that the vaccines were only slightly less effective against the B.1.135 variant which originated in South Africa. The B.1.135 variant has the E485K mutation that the P.1 variant has, which scientists theorize makes the strain better able to evade neutralizing antibodies from previous coronavirus infections and vaccines.
     
  10. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    I hear you.
    When people are devoid of the facts, they can just make up sht to match their own stories.

    As far as Texas is concerned, they can be an albatross during the Pandemic. Of the 20 counties of the most infected younger people in the US , 11 are in Texas.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2021
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  11. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I couldn't care less if I will confuse him. I don't post for only one poster. My goal in posting here is to clarify things for the community at large. We've already noticed that he is a dogmatic poster who doesn't know much about this issue but pontificates anyway. I mean, someone who affirms that necessarily the variants will be more infectious and less lethal, when in reality there is no doubt by now that the B.1.1.7 is BOTH more infectious AND more lethal, is someone who dwells in his own groundless theories rather than scientific facts (it's called wishful thinking). If he is confused, so be it. Others won't be. Like you. You are capable of understanding what I'm saying.
    ------------
    "Will existing vaccines be effective against the P.1 variant?
    Yes, they absolutely should be."

    Not necessarily.

    First of all, you need to understand that the tests are not completely conclusive. What we did, to test the mRNA vaccines against the new variants, is that we generated isogenic N501 and Y501 SARS-CoV-2 and then obtained sera of individuals who had participated in the active arm of mRNA vaccine trials, and tested for neutralization of N501 and Y501 viruses. The neutralization was equivalent, implying no difference in effectiveness. However, the artificially created mutated viruses used for the studies did not contain all the mutations found in the wild B.1.1.7 or B.1.351 lineage viruses (much less the P.1).

    Like I said, the P.1 has 10 mutations in the spike protein and 12 others elsewhere. These are more spike protein mutations than any other variant of concern. Lab testing with the CoronaVac showed a 6-fold decrease in neutralizing antibodies, and that's a vaccine that is done with inactivated whole virus which means it doesn't target only the S protein, and still, the variant was able to significantly dampen the immune response.

    Now, see, neither the B.1.1.7 nor the B.1.351 (you made the same typo I sometimes make; it's 351, not 135) seem to be as able to evade the immunity from the natural infection as the P.1 seems to be. The P.1 is particularly able to re-infect. That doesn't bode well for the vaccines, although the mRNA vaccines do have some advantages in terms of immunogenicity, over the natural infection (the RBD-binding IgG concentrations induced by the vaccines are above those induced by the natural infection). So it remains to be seen, after more studies.

    Of course the hope is that the vaccines will provide at least partial protection against the P.1 and will dampen the severity of the disease, and avoid hospitalizations and deaths, which is what ultimately counts. But we can't assume they will, until more studies are done. Like in sports, sometimes on paper a team is supposed to beat another team... but we got to play the game, and upsets do happen.

    And there is always the possibility that the P.1 will simply mutate more and produce still newer variants that will show even more pronounced antigenic drift. Not to forget, there are other factors in play, such as duration of immunity, and viral load. See, these two vaccines, Moderna and Pfizer, are so good that even a 6-fold drop in neutralizing antibodies may still leave enough neutralizing antibodies there to deliver effective protection, but then your cushion is narrowed. Then, if too much time goes by and the margin of protection is already diminished, at some point you may end up poorly protected. And given that these variants that have better capacity to attach to ACE2 receptors generally induce bigger viral loads, these infections may be more able to overwhelm the immune system even of a vaccinated person.

    On the other hand, both the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines do stimulate T-cell responses in addition to B-cell responses. So, neutralizing antibodies are not the whole picture; as you know, cytotoxic T cells can also destroy viruses.

    With the vaccines, we're winning a number of battles... but we haven't won the war yet.
     
  12. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No it doesn't not when a flue has already gone through the population.

    and what do flue shots have to do with this - you are not making sense.
     
  13. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Trump is an idiot .. and in not qualified to comment = not significant.

    76% infected with what - Covid ? name a city with a rate that high Average number of folks getting the flue each year is 5-20% - I used 20% for calculation purposes taking the higher end .

    back up your claim that these are not comparable with respect to rates of infection.
     
  14. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Good Post - 83.1 Million infected is roughly 25% of the population - herd immunity at 100 million is right in the range that I had calculated.
     
  15. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Trump is an idiot, sure, but to pretend that he is not relevant is not even a starter. Unfortunately he is relevant to 75 million people. Fortunately Biden is more relevant, to 81 million people (me among them).

    The city of Manaus, Brazil. Yes, Covid. Read up, to your heart's content:
    https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6526/288

    Again, the SARS-CoV-2 is much more infectious than the flu, so you using the flu to compare, is laughable. Read up again (I'll quote this paragraph for your pleasure, then will provide a study):
    https://www.qps.com/2020/10/05/covid-19-versus-the-seasonal-flu-facts-and-figures/

    And here is the study with the 5.7 R0:
    https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article?deliveryName=USCDC_333-DM25287

    NEVER assume I can't back up what I say. It just doesn't happen.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2021
  16. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Herd immunity at 25%? LOL

    You can't calculate zip. Refer to the post where I taught you how to calculate the herd immunity threshold and what heterogeneous factors apply, and what models to approach the heterogeneity apply. Post #51 above; read carefully its two links.

    Just quit. You don't know anything about Epidemiology and Virology.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2021
  17. Quantum Nerd

    Quantum Nerd Well-Known Member

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    I think what happened is that there are some news reports that state covid WILL become less lethal as it evolves to an endemic disease, because that's what is more typical for other corona viruses. That's where the poster's idea you are replying to is coming from, namely that covid already has become less lethal.

    Unfortunately, this notion is based on hope, rather than evidence. Reproductive fitness of the virus is determined by both transmissibility and virulence. In essence, if the virus kills all hosts before it can spread (very high virulence), it will reduce it's R0. Mutations will find an optimum between those two factors. This doesn't necessarily mean that virulence of covid will go down over time, because we don't know yet where it's optimum virulence is.

    This is a good paper explaining these issues:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-018-0055-5

    In some viruses, virulence actually increased after a species jump. The important factor is that (a least to my understanding) transmissibility alterations are fast, but virulence changes are slow. At the moment, the virus is exploring the transmissibility biological space, due to the selective pressure we are putting on it through mask wearing and social distancing. Therefore, current mutations increase transmissibility, not caring whether those mutations make the virus more virulent or not.
     
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  18. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    Just to make more sense.....
    I make the same mistake. The spell check does not differentiate between flu, an illness and flue, a duct for waste gas.

    Just saying a flu goes through a a population omits that any mutation along the way increases in chance as the infections increase. This makes the previous vaccines less effective. It happens every year with flu shots, not flue shots. Be prepared for booster shots for everyone over time.

    Not testing non symptomatic infected people, at least by a sample size in different areas, is a mistake. You MUST take them into account. They spread the disease and are as dangerous in exacerbating problems as known infected people who can more easily be identified and quarantined. It’s an ongoing problem made worse in leader lead science denier places like Texas.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2021
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  19. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Snide silliness is not required .. you should not get upset when asked to back up claim ... That said - these are good links so thanks.

    Biden is an idiot as well - truth be told. Who is more relevant is anyone's guess - and depends on one's criteria. Then there is the difference between what folks say and what folks do.


    The attack rate of 75% is really high - and this makes quite a difference. The term "attack rate" seems to mean what you said it does but I could not clarify from the article so looked it up "proportion of the people who get ill or die from the disease" . https://www.britannica.com/science/attack-rate

    now I am very confused because in a study on a cruise ship and the meat packing plant ~ 80% who were positive were asymptomatic - in the Diamond cruse ship study it was over 50%

    but going with 75% - - Perhaps more folks get the regular flue than the reported number - or maybe - because a population will have some immunity to the normal flue - this might be why you don't see attack rates of 75% - This is a new virus so there is no immunity. - A "Fresh Herd" - so that could be a difference. .

    There is also statistical variation to consider - that some populations may be more susceptible than others based on genetics - but also lack of immunity - that other populations might have - due to Isolation.

    From the QPS link

    I am assuming the flue numbers are for the US - and this would match up with the 5-20% number claimed to get the flue every season. The above being roughly 10-15% of US population.. I used 20% for my calculations - (actually having done some calculations with available data)

    The death numbers are higher that the 23/100,000 for a normal flue season .. although this varies from year to year - say from 18-25. Using 50 million x 23/100,000 gives 11,500 .. so these numbers do not jive - unfortunately 24,000-64000 is quite a bit higher than the normal range. The lower (24,000) end is barely acceptable I suppose .. this discrepancy is problematic but still works to show what seems reasonable in other areas. '

    Using 50 million and 24,000 - this works out to 48 /100,000 - so these two numbers are not crazy out of the range of each other.

    Calculating in my local area - over a population of 4.5 million - we have 20-30% of the population affected - with a death rate of 39/100,000.

    This would then be roughly 60% higher death rate than an average flue season if you use 23 as the number 25% lower if you use the higher number.

    The number given for Covid globally is 970,000 deaths on 31 million cases .. a death rate of 3129/100,000 - so something is wrong with this number.


    Going back to the other link and the 75% attack rate - this must include folks who are asymptomatic - (which does not really fit in with the definition - of those who fell ill - but OK )

    "The Diamond Princess cruise ship was quarantined in Yokohama, Japan, in February amid a COVID-19 outbreak that sickened 712 (19%) of 3,711 passengers, killing 13.
    https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-per...se-ship-studies-reflect-unique-disease-traits

    https://www.cebm.net/study/asymptomatic-covid-19-cases-on-board-the-diamond-princess-cruise-ship/

    So in this case .. the attack rate was - 17-19% "Including" those who are asymptomatic .. which was a little more than half who were positive.

    the 75% "Attack Rate" number seems very high - when compared to closed system studies - even if we include those who are asymptomatic - which does not technically fit the definition of "Attack Rate"


    https://www.healthline.com/health-n...9-not-aware-have-virus#How-transmission-works
     
  20. ronv

    ronv Well-Known Member

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    It's not easy to compare numbers.
    For example they tested the people on the cruse ship - the people on the cruse ship did not come in to get tested. Big difference.
    I have trouble following your math, but first the initial numbers you quoted of global deaths and cases is incorrect.
    There have been 116 million cases and 2.6 million deaths.
    Coronavirus Update (Live): 115,919,846 Cases and 2,574,103 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer (worldometers.info)
    I'm gonna take an unscientific run at your flu numbers.
    50 million from the flu itself.
    ~ 65 million from flu shots. (50% effective) 130 million shots.
    From the prior calculation for R0 (1.5) 110 million to get immunity.

    You can do the same calculation for Covid with the numbers from the CDC that I gave you of 83 million for covid from the disease and an R0 of 2.5. Using those numbers you can see we need to vaccinate at least 116 million people from when we started and that assumes we didn't waste any vaccine on people that already had the disease. We haven't.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2021
  21. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Correct.
    Just an apart, in the case of the SARS-CoV-2 for which higher viral load does often translate into more serious disease, these transmissibility mutations that enhance receptor binding to the ACE2 have resulted in these variants causing disease that has higher viral loads, therefore in practical terms, indirectly showing more virulence too.
     
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  22. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Snide silliness = just advice that you don't need to suppose that I can't back what I say; it doesn't happen. What I say is always based on science, which is not surprising given that I've been a professional medical scientist for the last 40 years.

    No time to go through all of this now and check your numbers but they seem awfully outdated.

    Anyway, attack rate in this paper refers to people infected with Covid-19. Since the point is how many are immune, it doesn't really matter if they were symptomatic or asymptomatic, to a certain degree, although asymptomatic infection is supposed to result in weaker immunity.

    You are correct in the fact that this being a novel virus, there isn't much of cross-immunity. We do have 4 other human coronaviruses that cause a subset of the common cold. It's been stipulated that people who have had several bouts of the common cold and these bouts happened to be by coronaviruses (which only account for 20% of common colds) are less susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 (which is one of the factors I used in my explanation of the herd immunity threshold and the "s" number - did you read my links on post #51? This is the third time I bring your attention to that.

    You are also correct that the flu numbers are influenced by the flu vaccine. It is accepted annually by about 46% of the US population, more or less depending on the year. Its effectiveness also varies between 20% and 80% depending on the accuracy of the guess that presides over the selection of the strains for the vaccine. These variations account for more or less lethality each year, among other factors.

    Again, you seem to conflate the SARS-CoV-2 with the influenza virus, the latter for you being the "regular flu" as if the SARS-CoV-2 would be some sort of "worse flu." Like I told you before, these are two vastly different viruses, and the sheer fact that one has a R0 of 1.3 while the other has a R0 anywhere between 2.5 and 6, makes of your comparisons, something quite meaningless.

    The SARS-CoV-2 is much more transmissible than the influenza virus. Therefore it will result in a larger share of the population catching it at least once, as compared to the influenza virus, especially given that immunity to it is less (it has existed for one year and a half at most while the flu has been with us for millennia).

    About the Diamond Princess, you can't just apply this situation to all populations, including because a high number of passengers secluded themselves inside their cabins. That was not a sample of the general population, in general population settings. The Diamond Princess cohort is interesting to study, but beware of extrapolating its numbers to the general population.

    I have to go now. Good bye.
     
  23. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What a joke of a response - starting out with a pud measuring contest - claiming to be a "Professional medical scientist" who everything you say is based in science .. yet your response is lacking in substance and full of false claims.

    Worse - you fail to address the science that I posted and conclusions I drew from that science -- managing only false accusations - claiming I made arguments I did not so you have something to attack.

    Obviously you didn't learn what logical fallacy was in your studies. - I too am a Scientist - one who does indeed dabble in the field of microbiology and chemistry - one of my specialties being environmental microbiology thus having way more knowledge about things like "Pneumonia" than you do - at least from the perspective of training received .. cause you don't get none of that in Medical School .. but . perhaps you can "School me" in this .. if your Pud is as large as you claim...

    I gave statistics .. showed my work - how is your Stats these days ..

    I did not claim that the Diamond cold be applied to all populations .. .. in fact it was you that made that error .. pretending that the one city in Brazil represented all populations .. thus projecting your failure onto me ..

    Suppose you didn't get much Psychology in school either .. You should check out Projection Therapy .. and perhaps learn something about yourself.
     
  24. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    They are producing a vaccine that roughly 6 billion people are looking to take. That is basically money falling from the sky and it will continue to fall for years. There will be time to scale back as demand tails off. There may also be a need to produce new vaccine variants as the disease alters. Further, with three Western vaccines plus the Russian and two (I think) Chinese there is competition. If you don't have enough countries will sign a contract with someone else.

    Additionally, drug companies need to keep decent relations with governments. Hold them to ransom at a time when their people are dying & their economies are in peril and you can be sure the institutional memory will linger. Maybe your next big drug or the one after doesn't get approved as quickly as you want...or at all. Maybe in countries where governments bulk buy or subsidize drugs to cut prices for citizens your drug doesn't get on the list. Maybe the EU decides it doesn't like you and suddenly one of the largest drug markets in the world turns hostile. Plenty of ways to get punished for overplaying a winning hand here.

    Drug companies get ample opportunities to gouge profit and they will do very well out of COVID. If they deliberately starve the market to make more money they will be taking a very big risk.
     
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  25. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Sorry, "gifted one." (LOL, is there a more arrogant screen name, anywhere? I've never found one). I'm an MD/PhD. I didn't just go to medical school. And sorry, but I simply don't believe you. Your "flue" recurring typo, your ignorance of the various causes of pneumonia, your completely misguided idea about the herd immunity threshold, your inability to even understand what I'm saying, betrays the fact that you are no scientist. Microbiology? LOL. What microbiologist ignores the various agents that cause pneumonia, and then you pretend you know pneumonia more than I do? What microbiologist doesn't know what attack rate is? Too funny. How "is my Stats" (sic) these days? A lot better than yours, if you think that 20% is enough for herd immunity. So, you didn't extrapolate the Diamond Princess cohort? You used their numbers to doubt my Manaus numbers. Anyway, I won't further waste my time with pretenders. Unlike you, I've proven my knowledge here over and over. I'm done with you. Have a long and safe life. Over and out.
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2021

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