Moderna

December 2, 2020

One million, divided by 365, equals 2,740… and, for the first time, that number was exceeded in the U.S. with respect to daily deaths… which simply means that at the present rate, C19 would claim more than a million American lives annually.

Fortunately, that’s not going to happen. Notwithstanding the present president’s disregard and complete lack of giving a shit with respect to doing anything to mitigate those deaths, vaccines are coming. Yeah, for all of you who want to heap praise on Trump for getting it done… how about you heap that praise on the tens of thousands of researchers whose hard work over many decades is what actually led to these vaccines. What Trump could’ve done, and hasn’t, is help keep things together before the vaccines arrive. It wouldn’t have taken much… a well-placed Tweet here or there, some sanity with respect to federal policy regarding masks and social distancing.

Whatever, the damage is done, and will be felt for decades and, for the moment, continues to rage with numbers that are scary. They’d be a hell of a lot more scary were it not for the vaccines, but even that is tempered by the brainwashed tens of millions who’ll refuse to get vaccinated, thanks to said soon-to-be-former-president’s nonsensical mixed messages.

Today, the U.K. became the first country outside of China and Russia to approve a vaccine. They’re planning the roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine as soon as next week. This is the one that needs to be kept super-cold, so there are logistical challenges to overcome. For what it’s worth, the Pfizer vaccine is one of seven that Canada has pre-ordered. Moderna and AstraZeneca, the two others with recently published excellent results, are also on that list.

When will Canada get a vaccine? That’s a good question, and the answer depends on who you ask. I’ve asked that question from many people who might have better than random guesses, and I’m feeling more optimistic than others. There’s a rumour that Trudeau screwed it all up and we’ll be waiting for months; that doesn’t seem to be the case. I know, this person said this and this person said that. I wish I could detail a bit what I’ve heard, but… for the moment… was told not to say more. And, for what it’s worth, this is friend of a friend of a friend sort of knowledge… but… it if it’s accurate, it’s promising. Stay tuned…

December 2, 2020

Follow & Discuss on Facebook

November 25, 2020

At some point soon, Health Canada will announce the availability of a vaccine. Provincial Health Services across the country are already working on the logistics of providing it to you.

If you ask someone today whether they’ll be getting it, the usual answer is “Of course… but not right away… just want to make sure it’s ok.”

Well… by the time it gets to most of us, it’ll almost certainly be ok. More than ok. In fact, it will have been ok from day 1, where some of the first people to have gotten it would have been at higher risk… front-line workers, elderly people… and they will all be just fine. More than fine.

It’s not an irrational concern; vaccines, as we’ve repeatedly heard, take many years to develop. And, even then, sometimes there are problems. How can this one, super-rushed at every step, be guaranteed to be safe? How can we sacrifice so much time without sacrificing quality?

Part of the answer lies in understanding why it usually takes so long.

First of all, as usual, money. Developing a vaccine isn’t cheap, and isn’t always successful. The millions of dollars it takes aren’t always so easy to find. After the initial idea for the vaccine is thought up, it takes money to develop that thought. A grant gets applied for, and that’s usually not successful… something like the good old 80/20 rule plays out… where only 20% of these proposals actually get funded to proceed. Just getting to that point is a grueling and time-consuming process. Where animal testing will be involved, ethics boards also need to sign off.

In this case, there were no grant proposals. A ton of money was found, and quickly. Bill & Melinda Gates have thrown a staggering $420 million dollars into C19 research. Also, a million dollars that went towards the funding of the Moderna vaccine came from… Dolly Parton. From far and wide, the money rolled in… and what usually takes years (if it happens at all)… took minutes.

This allowed multiple, parallel paths of development. Top minds from every angle tackled this problem, and it was found that developing an mRNA (instead of DNA) vaccine would be the right way to approach things. This inherently saved some time because some concerns that usually need to be addressed became non-issues. You don’t need the actual virus. You don’t need to attenuate it… a tricky process of reducing the virulence of a pathogen, enough that it becomes relatively harmless, but not so much that it becomes useless. All of that takes a lot of careful experimentation… and consumes a lot of time. But in this case, all that was needed was the genome sequence of the virus. The risk is far less with respect to human safety. The bigger risk is whether it’ll work at all.

At some point in the research, a vaccine candidate makes an appearance. And normally, there begins a cycle of testing, publishing, approval and requests for further funding… and each iteration requires more people, more testing, more money, more oversight and more approvals. These cycles take time. Finding more people. Finding more money. Sitting around waiting for approvals. But in this case, there were plenty of people and there was plenty of money. Typically, the people who hold the giant stamps of approval are busy… things enter a queue… to the bottom of the pile, and they slowly sift to the top, at which time they get dealt with. This time… straight to the top.

Eventually, after tests are shown to be successful and safe in large populations (tens of thousands of people), a drug company willing to take some risk gets involved… because they start from scratch, and need to duplicate the results to their satisfaction. The production, the testing results, everything. And if they do that successfully, then they can approach the FDA (or whatever other relevant governing body) for approval… after which they can figure out how they’re going to produce and distribute all of that in a way that makes economic sense.

In this case, a lot of that took place in parallel. We will never know how many millions of doses of non-viable vaccine got thrown into the garbage, and by whom… but with so much money available and so much at stake, it was the right way to do things. If this vaccine candidate might actually be the one, make lots, and make it now… and if turns out to not be the one, oh well… some money was wasted, but the risk/reward made it worth it.

There are already millions of doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine in existence. As we speak, millions more are being made… on the assumption that when this all goes in front of the FDA on December 10th, things will go well… so well that it’ll only be days later when wide-spread distribution will begin. Normally, production would have begun only after FDA approval.

Indeed, the right question that was asked months ago was a simple one… “How do we get a vaccine out to the world as quickly as possible?” – and the answer was to cut corners that wouldn’t affect the safety or effectiveness of the end result. And that’s what we’ve gotten.

When you’re so used to something taking that long, it’s natural to view it with suspicion… but here’s a simpler example. Let’s talk about NFL football for a minute… a typical NFL game takes a little over three hours to play. The game clock, though… it’s only an hour… 4 quarters of 15 minutes each. But here’s the thing… inside that one timed hour, the actual time the ball spends moving is… eleven minutes. But… there’s the time between plays, where the clock keeps moving… but the ball is sitting at the line of scrimmage, waiting. There are official replays. There are challenge flags. There are timeouts. There are clock stoppages. There are two-minute warnings. There are commercial breaks. There’s halftime. If you were to compress a typical NFL game by removing all of that, you could watch the entire thing in less than 15 minutes. Do you miss anything of value by doing so, if all you’re really interested in seeing is actual football being played?

Similarly, as it turns out, once you remove the bureaucratic delays from the vaccine-development timeline, all you’re left with is the science, and the procedures that drive it. And an end-product that’s as trustable as one that would otherwise have taken years.

After reading all that, you still might be thinking, “Yeah, but still…” and that’s ok. At some point, it’ll reach your comfort level… but for what it’s worth, if nobody wants to go first – sign me up. Having a clear understanding of how this all came about, I would have zero hesitation. If volunteers are needed for the front of the line, I’m there.

November 23, 2020

One might be a fluke, but two implies some consistency… and three pretty-much says, “lock” – and that is where we’re at with respect to vaccines.

Another announcement this morning from yet another vaccine manufacturer, this one from AstraZeneca, showing an average efficacy of 70%, but going up to 90%, depending on the dosage. Regulators from the FDA and Europe will be having a look at it soon.

From a timeline point of view, the two frontrunners, Pfizer and Moderna… may have their vaccines hitting the streets in the last two weeks of December, assuming the present timeline and FDA approval (set to be discussed Dec. 10th). Pfizer expects to make 50 million doses by the end of the year (and up to 1.3 billion next year). Moderna will have 20 million doses ready this year. Who will get it first? Mostly Americans, I would expect… and, honestly, they need it.

That great American Founding Father Patrick Henry proclaimed, “Give me Liberty or give me Death!” back in 1775. Americans, known for wanting it all, are taking those words to heart… potentially changing the “or” to an “and”.

Over the weekend, over 3 million people passed through security checkpoints in American airports. Something like one in 111 Americans travelled on a plane in the last 48 hours, the majority on their way home for Thanksgiving, where they will mingle in close quarters for several hours if not days… before boarding those same planes and heading back to wherever.

The timing with “vaccines vs. the virus” will be interesting… and will be the grand crescendo of 2020. In fact, let’s call it for a specific day – Dec 20th, 2020, precisely one month before Donald Trump exits, stage left. On that day, many places in the U.S. will be facing a catastrophic and unmanageable surge in cases, with hospitals completely overwhelmed. And right alongside that, there will be the knowledge that the vaccine is out there, and “How the hell do I get my hands on it?!”

The amusing-if-it-weren’t-so-tragic part of it will be the conspiracy spin… from those people who for the better part of a year have been claiming it’s a hoax and it’s all bullshit… who will now be screaming that only the elite have access to it and how come we don’t all get it, like, *now*, and it’s my right to have a vaccine… my *constitutional* right as part of the Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Clearly a vaccine fits into that. Like, you know, I don’t want a vaccine, I don’t need a vaccine, vaccines are for crowd control, vaccines are to murder us, Bill Gates, 5G, etc, etc… *BUT*, even so, if I want a vaccine, I should be able to get one. OK.

Keep your seatbelts securely fastened… the roller-coaster has just begun that big downhill. This is the part where you can put your hands up in the air and scream… or just hold on for dear life. Like I keep saying, there’s a finish line… but it’s going to be a wild ride getting there.

Graph for November 23, 2020

Follow & Discuss on Facebook

November 16, 2020

Terrific news today regarding Moderna’s vaccine trial… an unheard-of efficacy rate of 94.5%. In the study, 30,000 volunteers received a vaccination. Half of them got the real thing, half of them got salt water. Out of all those volunteers, 95 of them got infected with C19. Of those 95, 90 had gotten the placebo, and 5 had gotten the vaccine. Of those 5 who’d gotten the vaccine, none had a serious case of C19. Out of the other 90 cases, 11 of them were serious, a number that lines up with what’s been seen with some consistency out in the wild. In summary, as expected with any vaccine… it doesn’t guarantee you won’t get sick, but it dramatically cuts down your chances. And, if you do get sick, it’s likelier to be a milder course of illness. And, added bonus, this Moderna vaccine doesn’t need extreme cold to be transported or stored. It lives at the same temperature (conventional refrigeration) as many other common vaccines.

It’s great news if it holds up, like nobody in that study suddenly gets super-sick and has serious side-effects or anything like that. On that assumption, Moderna is already manufacturing for production, and some of the public (those at highest risk) might be getting the jab by late December. Perhaps by spring, we’ll be seeing a much larger general rollout. If that’s the case, there will be one hell of a lot of incredible summer parties. I’ll be sure to host a few. You’re all invited. Well… most of you.

However… we’re not there yet… and, as every day goes by, we seem to be drifting further and further from it. We will ultimately hit that finish line, but the idea is that most of us get there, and in good health.

I’ve added a new row of graphs… a graphic representation of deaths, just below the corresponding case-counts, just to keep a little reality in the picture… because there is a double-edge to the sword that will ultimately slay this virus, and that is… that this vaccine’s existence, whether today or in the future, gives many people the idea that this is all almost over and we can just gently glide to the end, and it’s party time now.

This is exactly not the time to let our collective guard down. The virus is still out there, the weather is getting colder and we’re all going to be indoors a lot more. The steepness of case counts and death counts – see attached. The gently rising curve of death hasn’t hit the levels we saw back in April, but it’s not hard to see the trend. We saw how quickly it blew up last time; not taking the proper measures could lead to this getting far worse. It’s up to us to not let that happen.

Follow & Discuss on Facebook

Go to Top