[conspire] Because people suck (or: Now Is the Winter of Our Discount Tent)

[paulz at ieee.org]

 By my calculation more people have died from COVID-19 in the last 7 months than all the US military deaths in all the wars in the last 70 years.

Is there an update on "excess deaths"?  Which includes the people who couldn't get their heart disease or cancer treatment etc?

Last week I “attended” a video conference at Stanford Medical Center regarding COVID-19 vaccines. 
In the past 9 months, 1 person in 1400 in this country has died from the virus. All indications are that will soon be 1 person in 1000.  Safety and efficacy of a vaccine needs to be compared with this harsh statistic.
Pfizer and BioNTech had more than 40,000 people in their phase 3 test.  The selection included minorities and a distribution of ages.  The looked for people whose life style put them at increased risk for exposure: medical workers, college students, etc.
It was a double blind test.  Half of the people got a placebo (saline solution).  Before the recent press release, they had tracked subjects for 2 months following the second injection.  The placebo group had 162 cases of COVID-19; the test group only 2.   
The Moderna test used 30,000 subjects and had similar results.  No one who received either vaccine had a severe case of COVID-19.  
The tests only counted people with symptoms.  Why did they not track asymptomatic cases?*  Vaccines creates antibodies which would confuse test results.*  Asymptomatic cases will not be a problem after many people are vaccinated.
Both tests will track the subjects for 2 years to study long term effects.  No one knows how long either vaccine will be effective.
At some time, the subjects who received the placebo will be identified and given the opportunity to get an approved vaccine.
Anyone know why the Pfizer vaccine needs to be kept at cryogenic temperatures?  My guess is that is what they were using in their research facilities before there was COVID-19.  So they stuck with what they knew.  Testing for storage life at higher temperatures would have added one more variable and several months to making a vaccine available.Here are my notes from a video conference by doctors at Stanford on Nov 19,2020 regarding vaccines and testing.
Phase 1 testing, typically 20 to 50 people mostly to test for adverse reactions and adjust dosage.
Phase 2 testing, several hundred subjects, mostly to test for adverse reactions.  Usually phase 2 testing includes testing the effectiveness of a proposed drug.  This was not done for COVID-19 because it would not be ethical to deliberately expose people to the virus.
Phase 3, large scale.  Pfizer and BioNTech had about 40,000 volunteers.  Moderna 30,000.  Both tests recruited people from black, brown and other minorities as well as different age groups.   They looked for people at increased risk for exposure because of their life style: healthcare workers, college students, essential workers, first responders.
Both tests randomly assigned equal numbers to get the vaccine or a placebo (saline solution).  Blind testing.  No one knew got which.  At some point in the future, people who got the placebo will be told and also offered an approved vaccine.
Looked for symptomatic COVID-19.  Why not asymptomatic cases?*  Vaccine creates antibodies which would confuse test results.*  Asymptomatic cases will not be a problem after many people are vaccinated.
Pfizer/BioNTech test followed people for 2 months after the second dose.  Out of 20,000 with placebo, there were 162 cases.  In the vaccinated group only 2 cases.  Moderna data was similar.  AND no serious cases in people treated with either vaccine.   This is in contrast with 1 in 1400 people in the US having died from COVID-19, in the past 9 months.
Data collection will continue for 2 years to study long term effects.  For example, no one yet knows how long a vaccine will provide immunity.
IMO, if I was offered either vaccine after FDA approval, I would do it.  I would still keep wearing my mask until the Health Department issued an All Clear.
Many non-medical projects make a prototype and test it and after a couple of iterations decide it’s good enough to release.  It’s usually a judgment call by management.
Medicines and medical devices follow a much more formal and rigorous procedure.  The vaccine testing protocol needed to be written and reviewed and approved before testing could start.  The documentation had to include every detail from how to select the subjects to how to interpret the results.
The news has repeatedly commented that the Phizer/BioNTech vaccine needs to be stored at a much colder temperature than the Moderna vaccine.  Why is this?  
Based on personal experience with medical devices, this is my speculation.  Pfizer had been working with vaccines for years before there was COVID-19.  In a research setting having special refrigerators is no big deal. There are lots of companies in Silicon Valley that have cryogenic equipment.  When Pfizer/BioNTech came against COVID-19, they kept with what they knew.  Testing and proving that warmer temperatures were OK would have added another variable and several months to the process.   For now, it is more expedient to order lots of special freezers.
So there will someday be an end to this scourge.  Estimates of March or May have some basis in science fact.

    On Tuesday, November 24, 2020, 01:34:21 PM PST, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:  
 
 Because people suck, lots more innocents are soon going to avoidably die
horribly, many people avoidably bankrupted by avoidable medical costs,
and many others avoidably have their health ruined for the rest of their
lives.  Avoidably, avoidably, avoidably.

...(look for Rick's original posting)  
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