CV19 - Cure worse than the disease? (Vol 13)

[monkfish1]

Roman Rhodes said:

monkfish1 said:

Dont worry. RR and tuna will justify it somehow.

Its only an added bonus watching you wriggle.

?

[Tuna]

TypeRTim said:

You said my point about cranking out a fix for a new virus, using a new technology was false information.

I'm asking which part of what I posted was false?

This is a new strain of coronavirus not seen before in humans.
Or
The vaccine uses a delivery method never used before in human vaccinations.
Or
That it's being heralded as the 'fix' by various political (and some medical) bodies and personalities around the globe (even though we both acknowledge that vaccination != treatment)

It was false information to compare developing a vaccine (even in record time) to developing a new therapeutic. They are two different things.

The context of the original question was cranking out a medical fix for physical damage caused by the virus (i.e. a therapeutic).

[TypeRTim]

Tuna said:

It was false information to compare developing a vaccine (even in record time) to developing a new therapeutic. They are two different things.

The context of the original question was cranking out a medical fix for physical damage caused by the virus (i.e. a therapeutic).

Therapeutic or vaccination, can you see that your original quote of Medicine isn't Engineering, you can't just 'crank out a fix' has been pretty disproven by the vaccine?

Given enough resources, anything is possible and it very much is engineering! They are using engineering principles in order to create these drugs! The vaccine itself is a feat of bio-engineering.

In any case, we're probably getting wound up in semantics.

[Tuna]

jagnet said:

Not just a workable vaccine, but multiple different ones. Very lucky indeed.

Call me a cynic, but it seems a remarkable coincidence that the more public money gets thrown at something and the more that private companies get to profit, the luckier it becomes.

Not really.

I remember going through the thermal scanners at Hong Kong airport roughly twenty years ago when SARS emerged. It was a serious global health threat, and a lot of research was done after the event to address the threat of a new variant. Billions has been poured into this sort of research over the years, and a lot of it doesn't "go anywhere".

Yes, we're lucky that we had twenty years warning of the threat posed by coronaviruses, but that's hardly a grand conspiracy, is it?

[SCEtoAUX]

JagLover said:

You cannot trust anything coming out of China on Covid.

I would argue that you cannot trust anything from our own Government either. The second that they started couting deaths of people with COVID as deaths from COVID the game was up.

[rfsteel]

Deaths within 28 days of vaccination broken down by dosage and cause of death

Finally, someone has admitted to collecting this data, though can't be published until next month;

ONS said:

This requires complex analysis linking vaccination records to death registrations. The provisional release date for these publications is August 2021. Once publication dates are finalised, they will be announced on our Release Calendar.

As such, the information request regarding deaths within 28 days of the COVID-19 vaccination is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.

This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.

[sim72]

rfsteel said:

Deaths within 28 days of vaccination broken down by dosage and cause of death

Finally, someone has admitted to collecting this data, though can't be published until next month;

ONS said:

This requires complex analysis linking vaccination records to death registrations. The provisional release date for these publications is August 2021. Once publication dates are finalised, they will be announced on our Release Calendar.

As such, the information request regarding deaths within 28 days of the COVID-19 vaccination is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.

This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.

Also

"We also hold analysis showing the number of deaths involving adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccination (not restricted to 28 days) in table 12 of our Monthly Mortality Analysis dataset, which may be of interest. There are currently 3 deaths registered with the aligning ICD codes for this. However, should this change, they will be updated in this table. This publication is due to be updated later in July 2021."

[Tuna]

TypeRTim said:

Therapeutic or vaccination, can you see that your original quote of Medicine isn't Engineering, you can't just 'crank out a fix' has been pretty disproven by the vaccine?

Given enough resources, anything is possible and it very much is engineering! They are using engineering principles in order to create these drugs! The vaccine itself is a feat of bio-engineering.

In any case, we're probably getting wound up in semantics.

I think you're just winding yourself up.

You'll be disappointed to learn that much of medicine is still trial and error. It's absolutely not the case that "anything is possible" - the incredibly complex human system cannot be controlled or repaired like a watch or car engine. That's why we have vaccine trials (even when rushing vaccines through the system!), and why we talk about "experimental" drugs. Or go and watch a knee replacement operation - it still comes down to a saw and a hammer - a remarkably crude fix that is only used because we cannot stop that sort of degenerative disease.

That's not to say we don't use engineering principles within medicine - I know people who work on the Human Genome project, and on cancer research, and they do some incredible engineering work - but in terms of therapeutics, medicines, prevention and cure, the complexity of human biology is beyond our ability to control with any sort of certainty. That's not a question of lack of resources, it's that the science is still being developed and will continue to be developed for decades yet.

[sim72]

SCEtoAUX said:

JagLover said:

You cannot trust anything coming out of China on Covid.

I would argue that you cannot trust anything from our own Government either. The second that they started couting deaths of people with COVID as deaths from COVID the game was up.

Except that the number of deaths which have COVID on the death certificate (154,000) is actually 25,000 higher than the Government's "within 28 days of a positive test" figure. I'm not exactly sure why this "with/from COVID" meme is still being trotted out.

[isaldiri]

bodhi said:

I think it's fair to say I'm not Pfizer's biggest fan no - a combination of well timed press releases suggesting they can make more money out of the vaccine about the time that the AZ clotting issue was being discovered, and the fact that they are too close to the authorities in the US for comfort. Sort of like Boeing and the FAA, with various board members taking positions high up in the CDC. For instance the $33 billion figure was mentioned in a CNN article yesterday, along with their announcement about the effectiveness of the booster jab they had developed, and when you clicked on the backup link, it took you to Pfizer's Q2 Financial Report. At least link to a different study and try not to make it too obvious folks.

I do get that it's not as simple as just pointing to a disease and saying "Develop a pill for that", however I'm struggling to see how it is that much more complex than developing a vaccine for a novel virus, and we've had about 7 or 8 companies develop those. Tamiflu wasn't great I'll grant you, but neither were the flu vaccines compared to what we have for COVID.

It just seems strange to me in the last 18 months of throwing all the money under the sun at a problem, we haven't at least found something which will take the edge off the symptoms. My go to cold remedy, Nurofen Cold and Flu doesn't kill the bug in the slightest, but it does make the experience less unpleasant. Granted it was useless when I had SARS2 a while ago, but Anadin Extra wasn't, and meant I could at least sleep.

The of course you have the fact that as soon as someone identifies a possible treatment (such as those we don't mention), there seems to be a queue of scientists waiting to say that it doesn't work. I just find it a bit odd that we've put a lot of eggs in one basket, that's all.

I suppose one large pharma is much the same to me as another. AZN are not a huggable benevolent company bent on doing good for the world anymore than PFE or indeed any other similar company after all. Soriot isn't just doing what he's doing out of the kindness of AZN shareholders but because ultimately he believes they will get a net benefit from it. Pfizer are of course (and rightly so if you were their CEO) trying to push booster requirements but they would say so wouldn't they as well? AZN were gearing up to try to profit from continually sell vaccines post pandemic despite taking a heap more public money after all.

Actually wrt to therapeutics, RTB here on the thread did iirc mention something about why that would likely prove more difficult than vaccines as vaccines are simply some form of exposure to the existing virus (which has far less variation than influenza) with your immune system doing the rest compared to a drug triggering the 'correct' response for a therapeutic.

The issue I'd tend to suggest is that the potential treatments all get touted as wonder fix all drugs which is why quite rightly quite a lot of people are quick to say it's unlikely to do so.

Paracetamol/cough type medication that works for a 'normal' cold/flu would presumably have much the same use for covid in most cases I'd have thought though with only the more severe vascular type complications that luckily not many people get tend to need more specialised medication like (expensive) monoclonal antibodies or similar? It literally took years to get effective antiviral medication for the likes of HiV - given the lack of effective anti viral therapeutics for most forms of viral infections I suppose it's a bit less eggs in one basket but simply one that is reflective of the difficulty involved vs bits of an existing virus wrapped up in some delivery system.

[alangla]

This might be of interest (and something that NHS England/PHE don't seem to report on)

Hospital acquired Covid cases triple in a week in Scotland: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/19477... - 42 cases either probably or definitely acquired in hospital in week ending 4th July.

I had a look around and can't find the source data set - quarterly figures for other HAIs are here - https://www.opendata.nhs.scot/dataset/quarterly-ep... but I can't find one that's either weekly or includes Covid.

I tried to find total hospitalisations for some context, it seems around that time daily admissions were around 55-67 a day, so maybe about 1 in 8 "admissions" were actually people that caught it in hospital. I used this for the daily hospital admissions values - https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/phs.covid.1... - on the "trends" tab.

[bodhi]

isaldiri said:

I suppose one large pharma is much the same to me as another. AZN are not a huggable benevolent company bent on doing good for the world anymore than PFE or indeed any other similar company after all. Soriot isn't just doing what he's doing out of the kindness of AZN shareholders but because ultimately he believes they will get a net benefit from it. Pfizer are of course (and rightly so if you were their CEO) trying to push booster requirements but they would say so wouldn't they as well? AZN were gearing up to try to profit from continually sell vaccines post pandemic despite taking a heap more public money after all.

Actually wrt to therapeutics, RTB here on the thread did iirc mention something about why that would likely prove more difficult than vaccines as vaccines are simply some form of exposure to the existing virus (which has far less variation than influenza) with your immune system doing the rest compared to a drug triggering the 'correct' response for a therapeutic.

The issue I'd tend to suggest is that the potential treatments all get touted as wonder fix all drugs which is why quite rightly quite a lot of people are quick to say it's unlikely to do so.

Paracetamol/cough type medication that works for a 'normal' cold/flu would presumably have much the same use for covid in most cases I'd have thought though with only the more severe vascular type complications that luckily not many people get tend to need more specialised medication like (expensive) monoclonal antibodies or similar? It literally took years to get effective antiviral medication for the likes of HiV - given the lack of effective anti viral therapeutics for most forms of viral infections I suppose it's a bit less eggs in one basket but simply one that is reflective of the difficulty involved vs bits of an existing virus wrapped up in some delivery system.

I'll happily admit there is probably an element of bias on my part as my nephew's partner works for AZN, and she is currently tearing her hair out at the treatment the AZN jab has had. I haven't spoken to her since that report was released from Spain yesterday, suggesting it was no worse for clotting than Pfizer (and both resulted in far less clots than COVID itself - or the contraceptive pill for that matter), but I don't suspect it will have improved her outlook much. There was an element of an introductory offer with AZN offering them at cost price - and I know they were funded in other ways for the development, however speaking to her they genuinely thought they were doing it for the right reasons - however I will be very surprised if they do that again....

Thank you for the explanation on therapeutics, things are a little more clear now. My thoughts were more along the same lines as the existing remedies we see for the other respiratory illnesses rather than a flat out cure, so to lessen symptoms and aid recovery. In fact given COVID appears to be more of a blood disease that results in clotting, the old housewives favourite Aspirin would have been worth investigation - in fact some Israeli scientists looked into it and did find a benefit, didn't see it continued elsewhere though:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/03/11/israeli-stu...

I know Aspirin has fallen out of fashion (again), but if it can be shown to have a benefit, I'd suggest fashion be damned.

What's the current guidance if you do contract SARS 2? Is it still Paracetamol and rest, and if you don't improve call 111?

I'd also suggest the other issue with any therapeutics mentioned is that, given this is our first "Politicised Pandemic", how seriously the treatments are taken seems to be determined by who suggests them, to a degree. Facui mentions remdisivir and it is employed everywhere, Trump mentions HCQ and it is instantly trashed. Of course they both turned out to be entirely ineffective so it is a little moot, but I'd hate to think we were missing out on something that could save lives just because the wrong guy suggested it.

[Mortarboard]

Rufus Stone said:

Tuna said:

False information I'm afraid.

We have seen a number of coronaviruses before - that's why this one has a number after it

So when they say "novel", they don't mean they've never worked on coronaviruses, or that they don't have work in the lab relating to coronaviruses.

They did two things differently. Firstly, they pushed forward with a fairly new (and still relatively untested) way to synthesise a vaccine. That wasn't "new science", just existing research applied to a new variant of coronavirus.

Secondly, they pushed through the approvals process at a rate that has never been seen before. These were unique circumstances, so they shortened a process that would normally take years to a few months.

But in both cases, they weren't doing anything new. There wasn't some new invention required, and they were (luckily) quite well prepared with the necessary infrastructure and research. We develop vaccines like this fairly regularly, so it's not so surprising they did so for covid - though the speed is quite astonishing compared to normal research.

And you'll note the vaccines aren't a "fix" - it's encouraging an existing immune system response, and is only 60-70% effective at preventing infection.

That's a world away from repairing lung damage (or even preventing it in the first place) on demand.

Good post.

It won't convince the anti-vaxxers with their emergency experimental drug claims though.

Good points, both of you.

I'm based in the US, in a current "hotspot" (Missouri).

An obviously fatigued doctor was interviewed on the news, he said he'd like to take the opportunity to point out to those that were hesitant to take the vaccine because its "emergency use only" should bear in mind that once in hospital, the treatments there for COVID are "emergency use only" too - so they can take their choice!

Current ratio of hospitalized patients unvaccinated to vaccinated is between 100 to 1 and 1000 to 1.

M.

Edited by Mortarboard on Thursday 29th July 16:35

[Mortarboard]

bodhi said:

I'd also suggest the other issue with any therapeutics mentioned is that, given this is our first "Politicised Pandemic", how seriously the treatments are taken seems to be determined by who suggests them, to a degree. Facui mentions remdisivir and it is employed everywhere, Trump mentions HCQ and it is instantly trashed. Of course they both turned out to be entirely ineffective so it is a little moot, but I'd hate to think we were missing out on something that could save lives just because the wrong guy suggested it.

One is a doctor, the other couldn't make money in an Atlantic City Casino.

Might have skewed the reception somewhat!

Unfortunately, thanks to social media etc., everyone has access to "evidence", and it's not hard to find dozens of supporting "articles" no matter what your viewpoint.

M.

[SS2.]

Mortarboard said:

Current ratio of hospitalized patients vaccinated to unvaccinated is between 100 to 1 and 1000 to 1.

Minimum of 100 vaccinated for everyone 1 unvaccinated - is that really what you meant to type ?

[steveT350C]

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[APontus]

steveT350C said:

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Get a free Doctors4CovidEthics Tin Foil Hat with early ticket purchase.

[Mortarboard]

SS2. said:

Mortarboard said:

Current ratio of hospitalized patients vaccinated to unvaccinated is between 100 to 1 and 1000 to 1.

Minimum of 100 vaccinated for everyone 1 unvaccinated - is that really what you meant to type ?

Other way 'round, obviuosly. Corrected my post above

M.

Edited by Mortarboard on Thursday 29th July 16:35

[SS2.]

Mortarboard said:

SS2. said:

Mortarboard said:

Current ratio of hospitalized patients vaccinated to unvaccinated is between 100 to 1 and 1000 to 1.

Minimum of 100 vaccinated for everyone 1 unvaccinated - is that really what you meant to type ?

Other way 'round, obviuosly.

M.

Well not obviously, but thanks for clarifying.

[bodhi]

Mortarboard said:

One is a doctor, the other couldn't make money in an Atlantic City Casino.

Might have skewed the reception somewhat!

Unfortunately, thanks to social media etc., everyone has access to "evidence", and it's not hard to find dozens of supporting "articles" no matter what your viewpoint.

M.

In fairness, Trump didn't originally suggest HCQ - that was done by Didier Raoult in Marseille, who is also a doctor.

However to your last point, absolutely, and the anti-vaxxers are by no means the only culprits in that. Witness over the last week or so half of Indie SAGE sharing a study suggesting that COVID lowered your IQ, when in reality, there wasn't really any way the study could have shown that. It's actually been a great study on the horseshoe theory, as an awful lot of the proclamations and habits of the anti-vaxxers are remarkably similar to the Zero COVID crew.