The best news is the new study from Israel that calculated the effectiveness of vaccines and determined the first pair of shots by MRNA vaccines proved 91% effective in protecting people from contracting Covid. That’s Pfizer and Moderna. And Pfizer has an edge with a smaller percentage of side effects.
Key to the study is this: After 6 months, the effectiveness dropped to 84%, and that booster shot was boosting immunity to 98% - even against the Delta variant.
It probably needs peer review to confirm/reject its findings but Israel is a global leader in its vaccine research.
WORST NEWS: Ivermectin does not treat Covid successfully. It causes an increase in people seeking medical care for accidental poisonings.
Best Observation: The charts of several states confirm my belief that Delta’s rise takes about 9 weeks to hit its peak. I’ve chosen 3 to highlight here: Missouri because Missouri/Arkansas were the first two states to get hit by Delta and both have seen declines in new cases for the past two weeks. (No graph is shown for MO).
California has 85% more residents than Florida has: 39.5 million to 21.5 million. Yet it has hit a peak under 26K/day, while Florida’s peak is more than double that, above 56K.
Also, CA’s spike began rounding the corner and leveling off in week 7. Florida’s kept spiking like a spaceship off a launchpad. Next week, we’ll likely see declines in both.
It easily displays what an extra 5% getting vaccines accomplishes as California is closing in on the desired 70% for everyone over age 18.
Graphs via Worldometers.info and the NY Times.
HAPPY NOTE: The Pfizer vaccine is no longer in emergency use status. It’s the first to get final approval by the FDA for use by most everyone 16 or older.
It should be called the BioNTech vaccine after the German company that created it. Pfizer collaborated, kicking in $185m. Chinese biotech Fosun kicked in $135m. The European Commission and European Investment Bank added $119m. The German government provided $445m during the Phase 2 trials last September. That’s $884m but none came from Operation Warp Speed.
The technology used to produce a successful vaccine occurred because of this woman’s post graduate work from 1985 on through today.
In collaboration with immunology professor Drew Weissman (University of Pennsylvania) from 1997 on, their research provided the base technology that both Pfizer and Moderna used to create the two most widespread vaccines.
And, oh btw, her daughter was a member of the gold medal rowing team in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, too, so none can question her Mommy skills either.
Another key player was BioNTech founder Uğur Şahin who “read an article in the medical journal The Lancet that convinced him the COVID‑19 coronavirus in China would soon become a global pandemic, so he called for scientists at the company to cancel their vacations and start development of a COVID‑19 vaccine in January 2020.[129] BioNTech started its program 'Project Lightspeed' to develop a vaccine against the new COVID‑19 virus based on its already established mRNA-technology,[31] which they had been developing since leading mRNA researcher Katalin Karikó joined the company in 2013.[130] Several variants of the vaccine were created in their laboratories in Mainz, and 20 of those were presented to experts of the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Langen.[131]” (via Wikipedia)
Their dedication and foresight has already spared billions of people from death by covid. Project Lightspeed was dispensing vaccine within 11 months of the cancelled vacations of those scientists. Currently there are no known longterm side effects of the Pfizer vaccine. None.
Also, the German government funding half the development cost likely came about because its Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was a research scientist in Quantum Chemistry in the 1980s. Her science literacy is big, covering math, physics and chemistry.
QUESTIONS I HAVE FOR IMMUNOLOGISTS
1) Do you find it amazing that an airborne virus can spread so fast that it reaches all 50 states within 3 weeks and spreads around the globe in about 2 months? I mean it pretty much means we’re all breathing the same air that cycled through billions of people.
2) Now that it’s documented that vaccinated people can still carry and spread covid, and that vaccinated people can still get ill, but the illness won’t be severe enough to get them hospitalized or dead, it does seem clear that the rising death stats are almost entirely unvaccinated people. So why are some largely unvaccinated countries not reporting massive outbreaks like we have? Lack of testing? Lack of reporting?
Finally, here’s further proof that there’s even people in medical fields who weren’t very good students. Someone has to hire the C-minus students apparently.
Also, there is a treatment option available if you act quickly after getting disgnosed. But few people are taking advantage of this, largely because they don’t know about it. How can we get correct information out soon enough and loud enough to correct this?
There remain many mysteries about covid that have yet to be studied and resolved. After this spike, some think the pandemic will become endemic, requiring intermittent booster shots to keep its spread limited. How often that may take is yet to be determined though. It’s not the flu where a shot once a year is the norm.