Coronavirus and You - Page 287

Moderna said its vaccine is expected to remain stable at standard refrigerator temperatures of 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 days, up from the previous estimate of seven days. The vaccine can remain stable at minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit for up to six months and at room temperature for 24 hours, the company said.

However, the results published in the scientific journal The Lancet are only from the first and second trial phases of one of those four vaccines.

According to the report, Sinovac Biotech's CoronaVac triggered a quick immune response, although the study conducted in April and May this year did not give a percentage of the vaccine's success rate.

Zhu Fengcai, one of the paper's authors, said the results - which are based on 144 participants in the phase 1 trial and 600 in the phase 2 trial - meant the vaccine was "suitable for emergency use".
[...]
Its vaccine is different from the ones announced by Pfizer/BionTech and Moderna in that it has been
developed using more traditional methods. It uses a chemically inactivated version of the virus. The manufacturers highlight the fact that their vaccine gives a "quick" response in the trials - developing virus-fighting antibodies within 14 days of receiving a dose. This feature would make it suitable for emergency use, they say, during an outbreak or for healthcare workers.

The other two use a harmless virus that has been genetically modified to resemble the coronavirus.

Two doses are also required, but one advantage of Sputnik is that it doesn't need to be stored at very low temperatures, around -80C, unlike Pfizer's.

On November 18 2020 17:38 Elroi wrote:
We have mask debates every ten pages or so here and it always goes something like this:
1) someone claims that it is beyond absurd to think that masks doesn't help against the virus.
2) he gets called out and provides some sources.
3) Other people claim that those tests are from laboratory settings and we still don't know how that pans out in real society.
4) we end up with two (imo pretty reasonable) opposing claims: we should try masks anyway because we
really think it works and it isn't so bad to use masks; or, we can't ask people to use masks because we don't know that it helps in this setting (and if it doesn't it will hurt the credibility of the authorities) and it's a real intrusion into people's lives.

On November 19 2020 02:12 JimmiC wrote:

I am very pro vaccine and would not take the Russian or Chinese ones unless independently tested in a non dictatorship country. They have shown the propensity to show their empires in the best light instead of the truthful one at the expense of their own people which makes me doubt they would care that much about the rest of the world, other then how a failure might make the empire look. I would probably trust the Chinese one over the Russian one as the labs and handling the epidemic show more competency but I'd rather stick to western Europe or NA tested ones.


How does it work with different vaccines. Like is there any chance to get the maximum out to people you could do the -70 degree one in big centers and the other one in areas where the freezers and transport would be more of a issue? If either is going to have production problems and there is not a down side to suing both (like they protect close to the same) that might end up being the best option. I could see there being fear of people getting the "worse" one or Govs being scared that they might get in trouble if one ends up worse, but there is risk with any strategy.

On November 19 2020 02:12 JimmiC wrote:

I am very pro vaccine and would not take the Russian or Chinese ones unless independently tested in a non dictatorship country. They have shown the propensity to show their empires in the best light instead of the truthful one at the expense of their own people which makes me doubt they would care that much about the rest of the world, other then how a failure might make the empire look. I would probably trust the Chinese one over the Russian one as the labs and handling the epidemic show more competency but I'd rather stick to western Europe or NA tested ones.


How does it work with different vaccines. Like is there any chance to get the maximum out to people you could do the -70 degree one in big centers and the other one in areas where the freezers and transport would be more of a issue? If either is going to have production problems and there is not a down side to suing both (like they protect close to the same) that might end up being the best option. I could see there being fear of people getting the "worse" one or Govs being scared that they might get in trouble if one ends up worse, but there is risk with any strategy.

Over-reliance on Part-Time and Casual Employment Across Ontario, the share of casual / part-time nursing employment peaked in the late 1990s at over 50%. Although it has improved slightly since then, it remains unacceptably high (see chart 2). Since SARS was by and large an issue for the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), the employment patterns in this area are of particular interest. From College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) data, we see that the patterns of part-time and casual employment in Toronto and in the GTA are similar to that for Ontario as a whole. Table 1 shows the employment status of nurses employed in nursing in Ontario, in the GTA and in Metro Toronto.

The number of Canadian nurses moving to the US has continued to increase over the past decade. Given that Canada is facing its own nursing shortage, what exactly is it about the US that’s so appealing to nurses?
Over three-quarters of respondents said they left Canada to obtain full-time RN employment;

On November 19 2020 20:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


I've taken 2 rapid tests before (in New Jersey) and they were completely covered by my health insurance... both times... after a few bucks (like $10) as a copay.

On November 20 2020 03:37 Emnjay808 wrote:

Thanks that’s what I’m hoping lol. I wouldn’t even mind if copay would be higher than 20 bucks tbh

On November 20 2020 02:48 JimmiC wrote:
I'm also really confused on the almost no job offers for full time nurses in Ontario, I quick search brings up what looks like tons to me compared to almost any other employment.

https://ca.indeed.com/Registered-Nurse-jobs-in-Ontario?advn=6625725675672084&vjk=2355732ffbd1511b

On November 19 2020 01:59 Mohdoo wrote:

No, this is pure ignorance. We have plenty of studies that have made it abundantly clear that masks help outside of laboratory settings and specifically with covid. The other perspective is not reasonable and does not deserve attention.

Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.

On November 20 2020 05:12 Vivax wrote:


Here's a recent one:

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

What mostly caught my eye is this:


the 95% CIs are the extremes and the actual value would be somewhere in the middle. Not significant means the sample size was too small and the effect probably is too (in relation to the sample size I'd add before looking like I'm against masks).

Oh and the guy in Travis video conference vid is called Dr. Robert Hodgkinson apparently, so he's not a random dude spreading misinfo (though he has a bit of an extreme opinion).


Found an interesting project by Cambridge for an app in the comments section of my newspapers. Seems to make more sense to me than contact tracing and might give it a shot.

https://www.covid-19-sounds.org/en/

I wouldn’t say the sample size is too small when that’s the largest mask study to date and isn’t a junky n<1000 one. The “compatible with” is an awkward way of stating the limits of studies in general observing minor impact factors. IE statistics students are more commonly taught to observe that they fail to reject the null hypothesis, rather than opine on which variety of possibilities could be concealed by random chance (see also someone claiming that the study shows masks might have increased covid spread among wearers).

On November 20 2020 05:12 Vivax wrote:

Oh and the guy in Travis video conference vid is called Dr. Robert Hodgkinson apparently, so he's not a random dude spreading misinfo (though he has a bit of an extreme opinion).

On November 18 2020 14:28 RenSC2 wrote:
"no evidence of masks being useful" - except all the evidence of masks being useful against airborne viruses.
"social distancing is also useless" - except all the evidence of it being useful.
"the risk of death under 65 in this province is 1 in 300,000" - Blatantly wrong. Breakdowns are by 10s, so under 60, the deaths in Alberta are 16 out of 35,291 or about 1 in 2200 die, not 1 in 300,000. He's off by a factor of more than 100.