WELCOME TO THE VACCINATION ACROSS THE NATION EDITION, YUP:

IT’S NEEDLE TIME!!!

This cartoon belongs to the fabulous Matt of the Telegraph

BEWARE FOR, THIS BLOGGAGE TODAY IS JAM-PACKED WITH ESSENTIAL FACTS -

OH, AND THE ODD GRAPH TOO

Well it has to be said, the World seems to have changed, if you believe the UK gutter press and the British Let’s Be Careful Not To Offend News Channels, namely that because we in Britain seem to have the most vaccine bottles in the World (purchased a long long time ago) by the UK Government’s Representative Ms Kate Bingham** (see below), we’ll soon be ALL RIGHT THEN despite not using the Pfizer vaccine in the recommended way, as employed by everybody else in the World who has it. This gamble is to ensure that despite UK people getting their second dose not 21 days later than the first but 12 weeks later than the first, about which there are no pieces of data whatsoever, at least, twice as many people will receive this vaccine one dose anyway, and the evidence so far (hard evidence) by Numero uno Vaccinators Israel is that One Dose will deliver up to 85% efficacy, for up to 6-8 weeks, then the second dose, the Booster, despite not having a chance in the UK to kick in properly, can er well BOOST the first one as much as possible, as yet unknown (coming up to that 3 month time in the UK where we’ll get some data about this….

** Kate Bingham, former chair of the UK vaccine taskforce, left her post at the end of 2020, Bingham, a venture capitalist married to Treasury minister Jesse Norman, had come under fire for her use of expensive PR consultants and allegations over a presentation to a private investors’ conference. There is a VERY interesting in depth interview with her from 8th February 2021 where she states that the Vaccine Taskforce was set up by Sir Patrick Vallance, chief medical officer in the UK, and procuring the 400 million doses of the vaccine was essentially done as any medical investment decision would be made, except the UK did this early as a result of FORESIGHT by the Prime Minister. WELL, who would have thought? It also analyses all the vaccine companies’ attitudes and business models whilst creating all the vaccines currently available. (https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/02/07/news/kate_bingham_interview_vaccines_covid_astrazeneca_uk_coronavirus_johnson-286384093/)

The second vaccine the Oxford/AstraZeneca Vaccine has been rolled out in large amounts, but because the data available was presented initially in a VERY confusing way, with fewer people over 60 being involved and much later in the trials, and that subsequent analyses of data from different countries, such as Germany and South Africa, have suggested that the vaccine isn’t as effective in older people (over 60) or against the newly discovered “variants” or strains of the Covid-19 virus, the Oxford vaccine has not been taken up by these countries while it has been very successful according to data released this last weekend, in many other countries, obviously including the UK, where one dose has reached 90% efficacy after 28 days as opposed to 85% for the Pfizer vaccine.

ANYWAY, data is/are coming in thick and fast, so here below, in a mo, we’ll have a quick VACCINE REVIEW.

While we do that, we can consider some other facts:

• The UK became the Nation with the HIGHEST DEATH RATE IN THE WORLD (deaths/population), true up to February 11th 2021, currently the number of Covid-Related deaths in the UK being 120,000 plus (see Data at end of today’s blog, as usual).

• Today, 23rd February 2021, the US number of deaths passed Half a Million, more than the fatalities in both World Wars and the Vietnam war combined.

• As of 20th February 2021, 130 countries in the World have received no vaccines whatsoever, while TEN countries gave already used up 75% of the World’s Covid-19 supply. (https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/18/world/united-nations-130-countries-no-vaccine-trnd/index.html)

VACCINE REVIEW

There are already an alarming number of graphs of data related to Vaccine Roll-out. Let’s just say that as of FEBRUARY 21st 2021, the above graph represents how fast, and how many, the major territories are handling things.

ISRAEL as has been widely reported, did a mega deal with Pfizer-BioNTech and bought a considerable amount of their vaccine (at a rather high price). The UK may have issued the first dose of it (or any vaccine) worldwide back in early December, but Israel. followed by the UAE, then UK/US have the highest proportion of jabs given per population as of 22nd February 2021. Much of the efficacy data on Pfizer has thus come from Israel so far.

But as fast vaccines are being rolled out, and the wealthiest people have the most vaccines at the moment, out of the 215 million plus jabs having already been issued, the big companies in production of vaccines, namely Pfizer-BioNTech, Astra-Zeneca and Moderna, are laready under huge pressure, and are building more factories to get the quantities up. In the following graph, let’s see what the World has had to offer so far in terms of companies and their vaccines:

Now, it’s clear that at the current rate, it will take AT LEAST two more years to offer vaccines to the whole World. Each Country is making its own decision about which vaccines they should purchase according to how they analyse the data (with the EU currently acting as one, but with many countries hugely annoyed that certification of vaccines is taking a long time, with individual countries France, Germany and Italy hardly having any at all in the first couple of months of roll-out).

There will ALSO most likely be the first Vaccine Revisions available late in the year of several of the available vaccines incorporating what will probably be annual updates to the vaccines to allow for mutations (variants/strains) that occur with viruses. In the UK, we’ve seen the “Kent Variant” (see cartoon at Top), the South African variant (which may or may not have a limiting effect on the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine), and the Brazilian. No comment.

In the UK, there have been 17.7 million people given their first dose of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines as of Feb 22, 2021, 625,000 have received a second dose, and from next month, further vaccines will be available.

VARIANTS and VACCINES

The UK’s JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) will be constantly seeking data on all the major variants discovered worldwide but particularly in the UK, where in December 2020 the “Kent Variant” had a devastating effect being more easily spread and infecting in the UK and requiring a total lockdown across the UK. If the vaccine hadn’t started being rolled out in the UK in December, everyone with knowledge (aplease yourselves, here) has stated that the NHS would have ground to a halt and the death rate and hospitalisations would have been even higher.

ORIGINAL COVID-19 VIRUS Sars-CoV-2 From Wuhan, probably, first version, evolved into European D614

UK COVID VARIANT VOC202012/01 containing Spike N501Y variant

KENT VARIANT B.1.1.7 with Spike 501.V2 most dominant in UK. New UK variant from Edinburgh is B.1.525

South African VARIANT VOC202012/02 containing Spike E484K mutation (aka 20I/501Y.V2 and B.1.351). A small trial in SA stated that the AZ vaccine has 10% efficacy against this variant ”leading to mild or moderate disease” (so has decided against using this vaccine as of 8th Feb 2021, though a week later, World Health Organisation (WHO) data approved worldwide use of the current AZ vaccine and a forthcoming update of it).

Germany, Sweden, France, Denmark and Norway have since decided to DELAY AZ vaccine roll-out to the over 60s until they receive further data. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/23/oxford-vaccine-astrazeneca-covid-19-vs-pfizer-safe-uk-who/ )

BRAZIL VARIANT 1 202101/01 (E484K and others) BRAZIL VARIANT 2 202101/02 (E484K and others)
These are referred to as 20I/501Y.V2 aka B.1.128 P2 and P1 respectively

BRISTOL VARIANT VOC202102/02 (E484K) LIVERPOOL VARIANT VUI202102/01 (E484K)

NIGERIA VARIANT VUI202102/03 (E484K and others)

As of Feb 17th 2021, the UK chart for discovered variants is below!

It’s kinda agreed that the only one that nay require alteration of some future vaccines is the South African variant. So let’s see….meantime here’s the up-to-date state of the 407 million doses of 7 VACCINES in the UK :

OXFORD/AstraZeneca (UK/Sweden) Purchased 100 million (up to 95% effective protection after 2 doses)

PFIZER/BioNTech (Belgium/Germany/USA) Purchased 40 million (up to 96% effective protection after 2 doses)

MODERNA (USA) Purchased 17 million (up to 94 % effective protection after 2 doses) Availability: April 2021

NOVAVAX (USA) Purchased 60 million (still under Stage 3 trials in the UK) Availability: From May 2021 ?

VALNEVA (France/UK/Scotland) Purchased 100 million (awaiting Stage 3 trials) Availability: From Nov 2021 ?

JANSSEN/Johnson & Johnson (USA) Purchased 30 million SINGLE DOSE (65-85% effective protection after one jab/57% against the SA variant) Availability: August 2021 ?

GSK/Sanofi (UK/France) Purchased 60 million *** Have had to do more trials on a new version after trials of the first version had a very limited effect on older people

SO

As the World battles to get vaccines, the more (if they work) the merrier. Israel wouldn’t give the Palestinians any so Russia sent the UAE plenty, another vaccine this week is being delivered to Palestine. What other vaccines are being used now? India is currently using mainly the AZ vaccine, and is trialling its own COVAXIN. Russia’s SPUTNIK V is being administered in many countries including Argentina, Palestine and UAE as mentioned, Pakistan and Iran. The Chinese Sinovac vaccine CoronaVac is in Brazil and the rest of South America, while two other Chines vaccines from Sinopharm and Cansino are also being used in Africa and Mexico.

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IN TODAY’S CONCLUSION, it’s clear that:

a) The World is relying upon vaccines plus lockdowns and/or equivalent to slow down and hopefully mostly eradicate Covid-19 from the populations where industry has ground to a halt and deaths have been massively rising. Anyone who denies the severity of this virus is, quite frankly, an oaf, and a dangerous one at that.

b) Despite hospital treatments that have helped to slow down death rates across the globe, second and third waves, plus mutations of this like any other virus have caused deaths and infections to increase in the more populated ends of the Earth, so it’s absolutely definite that Government strategies have totally failed in many cases.

c) The years to come will be all about living and coping with this version of SARS and hoping hat the benefits that Science have brought to us get shared as generously and deservedly as possible amongst everyone. If Science gets shared properly, maybe the next generations will have some repercussions of Climate Change and Poverty sorted too.

Well, here’s hoping.

Comments welcome, as ever. xx