Coronavirus Thread VI: Are We Nearly There Yet? (READ OP)

[Vassenor]

Amazon has now developed its own covid test

The company on Thursday received emergency clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for an at-home test known as the Amazon Covid-19 Collection Kit. The nasal swab and PCR-based test, developed by Amazon subsidiary STS Lab Holdco, allows users to test themselves with or without the supervision of a health care professional.

The authorization comes as Amazon is making a full-court press into health care. Just two weeks ago, the tech giant announced the national expansion of its virtual-first health care platform, Amazon Care; two months before that, it penned a letter to President Biden offering logistical and technical support for its Covid-19 vaccine distribution plans. STS Lab Holdco is currently operating federally authorized laboratories from which it can process the results of its Covid-19 tests in at least seven states, including California, Texas, Kentucky, and Florida, according to paperwork filed publicly and viewed by STAT.

The test clearance gives Amazon yet another chance to deepen its existing inroads in health care, which now span virtual and in-person care, wearables, and Covid-19 research. While there is currently no shortage of available Covid-19 tests — including those that offer people the ability to self test — the new kit could provide further traction for Amazon Care, should the the company choose to make it available as part of that program. According to publicly filed documents viewed by STAT, Amazon created and trademarked Care Medical, the medical provider with whom it has said it contracts to deliver its services. In recent days, Amazon has expanded Care from a service focused on urgent and primary care to one capable of providing preventive and chronic care as well. In a job posting earlier this month, Amazon also listed Care’s mission statement for the first time: “To invent and simplify large-scale solutions and bring the future to customers and clinicians.”

Part of Amazon’s plan to offer those services involves so-called Care Teams, dedicated groups of health care providers who are matched with patients. The Care Team will “get to know you, understand your health goals, and build a relationship with you to provide the care you need,” according to Care’s website. That aspect of the business is very similar to an effort by now-shuttered Haven, Amazon’s joint venture with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, which involved assigning a dedicated team of primary care health workers to each patient.

Presumably it always tests Negative so that employees don't have to miss work.

[New Visayan Islands]

Data for PH as of March 29th, 1600 PHT/0400 EDT. SHITTING BRICKS IS NOW PART OF THE COURSE.

Detailed update in Tagalog. Key data to consider:

• 28492 people were tested, with an 18% positivity rate. That's 5129 positive results for SARS-CoV-2 if you did the math and rounded off to the nearest whole person because 5128.56 is the exact amount.
• 10016 people were added to the "I have The Coof" tally.
• 78 people moved to the "I survived The Coof" tally, and 16 people croaked.

Also:

• Erap: I have The Coof.
• And the economic ramifications ensue.
• Fauci: See this? This is what happens when you ease Coof Control measures too early.
• "Not lack of government response," hell!

[Glorious Hong Kong]

Finally! Malaysia records fewer than 1000 cases for the first time since Dec. 9. Cases in my home state are also below average (<200) today.

[Ethel mermania]

Things are improving. I haven’t been watching the stats for awhile. Just checked out of curiosity and found serious critical numbers are down to 8500. For the longest time is was 16000 and went up to 30000 thanks to the brilliant lack of leadership of the ex-president. The death numbers are at 560K so we will probably pass the civil war.

Amazing what happens when you actually have a plan and set goals for vaccinations.

Weirdly, we in the state are bouncing up. The city #'s are still looking good

[Galloism]

Amazon has now developed its own covid test

The company on Thursday received emergency clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for an at-home test known as the Amazon Covid-19 Collection Kit. The nasal swab and PCR-based test, developed by Amazon subsidiary STS Lab Holdco, allows users to test themselves with or without the supervision of a health care professional.

The authorization comes as Amazon is making a full-court press into health care. Just two weeks ago, the tech giant announced the national expansion of its virtual-first health care platform, Amazon Care; two months before that, it penned a letter to President Biden offering logistical and technical support for its Covid-19 vaccine distribution plans. STS Lab Holdco is currently operating federally authorized laboratories from which it can process the results of its Covid-19 tests in at least seven states, including California, Texas, Kentucky, and Florida, according to paperwork filed publicly and viewed by STAT.

The test clearance gives Amazon yet another chance to deepen its existing inroads in health care, which now span virtual and in-person care, wearables, and Covid-19 research. While there is currently no shortage of available Covid-19 tests — including those that offer people the ability to self test — the new kit could provide further traction for Amazon Care, should the the company choose to make it available as part of that program. According to publicly filed documents viewed by STAT, Amazon created and trademarked Care Medical, the medical provider with whom it has said it contracts to deliver its services. In recent days, Amazon has expanded Care from a service focused on urgent and primary care to one capable of providing preventive and chronic care as well. In a job posting earlier this month, Amazon also listed Care’s mission statement for the first time: “To invent and simplify large-scale solutions and bring the future to customers and clinicians.”

Part of Amazon’s plan to offer those services involves so-called Care Teams, dedicated groups of health care providers who are matched with patients. The Care Team will “get to know you, understand your health goals, and build a relationship with you to provide the care you need,” according to Care’s website. That aspect of the business is very similar to an effort by now-shuttered Haven, Amazon’s joint venture with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, which involved assigning a dedicated team of primary care health workers to each patient.

Knowing amazon, it's probably administered rectally, like their employment policies.

[New Visayan Islands]

Finally! Malaysia records fewer than 1000 cases for the first time since Dec. 9. Cases in my home state are also below average (<200) today.

Consider yourself lucky; my last post pointed out that the Philippines reached its highest recorded number of new cases earlier today.

Anyway: oral Coof Shot PILL is oral.

Dominican priest and molecular biologist Fr. Nicanor Austriaco is developing a Filipino-made oral vaccine based on a yeast system that would be effective against the coronavirus disease and the more infectious COVID-19 variants.

"We are developing two vaccines now-- one for the original virus and we have some for the variants as well. As you know the variants are taking over the Philippines so we need to develop a version of this vaccine that would be effective against the variants as well," Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, who is also a member of the OCTA Research Group, told GMA News in an online interview on Monday.

Austriaco, who has a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a trained yeast expert for 25 years, said the yeast-based vaccine delivery will produce a spike protein, which creates an immune response against the virus that causes COVID-19.

"We want to take a common probiotic yeast, Saccharomyces boulardii is the name of the yeast. You can actually go to Watsons to buy it today. We genetically engineered this yeast so it will produce the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 in your body," the priest-scientist pointed out.

Austriaco said the vaccine is a pill that can be added to water, milk, beer and even wine, which can be easily consumed.

Unlike other types of vaccines, Austriaco said his yeast-based vaccine does not need to be refrigerated since yeast can be stored at room temperature.

"If you are going to make bread, you have yeast. Yeast is a living organism and lives in room temperature. It is not going to die and if it is dry it is not going to die for 2 years," said Austriaco.

Aside from this, Austriaco's vaccine can also be taken without health professionals' help, which means it can also be delivered to Filipinos residing in far-flung areas.

"You don't need a doctor, you don't need a nurse, you don't need an injector, you don't need a refrigerator. For our country, with more than 7,000 islands, millions of Filipinos in the bundok, how will you deliver the vaccine to them?" the expert said.

"This yeast delivery system is very stable. You can put it to a box and you can carry it with you, take it on the boat, take it on the Babuyan islands without refrigerators," Austriaco further explained.

Austriaco said they plan to conduct tests for the vaccine at University of Santo Tomas in Manila wherein they will feed the vaccine to the mice and observe whether the animal subjects will produce an immune response against the virus.

He also estimated that if the yeast-made vaccine works by December this year, they will craft plans on manufacturing the drug and how to distribute it.

"Earliest is maybe by Christmas, maybe we have studies from people, and if it works, I have to find someone to manufacture in the Philippines and we have to figure out how to distribute it," said Austriaco.

Vaccine to be effective vs hospitalization, fatality

But Austriaco said the vaccine may not give 100% immunity against COVID-19 and its variants but it would prevent an infected patient from drying or getting hospitalized.

"I do not expect that an oral vaccine like this is going to have efficacies as high as mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna but my hope is, it is high enough that it will allow a Filipino not to go to a hospital if he gets sick... I don't want you to get sick, go to hospital and then die," said Austriaco.

"My goal for this scrappy vaccine, this very earthy vaccine is that it will provide enough protection for the Filipino people so we will not have to go to hospital," he further said.

Austriaco said his goal is to create a vaccine that would have an efficacy rate of above 80% to 85% that would prevent hospitalization and death.

He also noted that through his vaccines, COVID-19 will be converted from a killer disease into a "regular cold or even a flu."

The molecular biologist also said his vaccines will boost the immunity response of a person who already received COVID-19 jabs.

"I'm imagining this vaccine as a second line booster vaccine. You have injected Astrazeneca or Sinovac, but now we give you this oral vaccine to keep it up," said Austriaco.

Cheaper vaccines

The Dominican priest, who has taken a vow of poverty, said his vaccines will be cost-effective, similar to buying pills at a drug store.

"Again if you buy isang pill, it is like 35 pesos. You can imagine you have to do this five days in a row," he said, adding that he does not plan to create vaccines to earn money.

In the long run, Austriaco said making cheaper vaccines for Filipinos every year is also cheaper than buying "extremely expensive" drugs from biotech firms in other countries.

"My hope is that next year, when the Filipino people are doing this again, instead of us buying vaccines from all over the world again, then we can just make it at home and we can distribute it," the priest said.

The national government procured millions of vaccine shots from different international companies as it targets to vaccinate 500,000 vaccinations per week in April to one million per week in May.

To date, Philippines reported a record-high 10,016 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total caseload to 731,894. Of the sum, 115,495 cases are active, 13,186 are deaths and 603,213 are recoveries.

With the National Capital Region and its nearby areas under the strictest form of quarantine, the Philippine government blamed the rise of infections to the coronavirus disease variants and not the lack of government response to the pandemic.

[Glorious Hong Kong]

Finally! Malaysia records fewer than 1000 cases for the first time since Dec. 9. Cases in my home state are also below average (<200) today.

Consider yourself lucky; my last post pointed out that the Philippines reached its highest recorded number of new cases earlier today.

Stay safe.

[San Lumen]

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5 ... study-says

COVID-19 vaccines prevent 90 percent of all infections, CDC study says

[Xmara]

Mom and I finally got appointments to get our covid vaccinations! We go this Thursday. IDK which one we're getting.

[Kowani]

Meanwhile, vaccines

President Biden is set to announce that 90 percent of U.S. adults will be eligible for vaccination and will have a vaccination site within 5 miles of where they live by April 19, the White House said Monday.
Biden will also announce in a speech Monday afternoon that the number of pharmacies in the federal vaccination program will more than double, from 17,000 to 40,000, by the same date.

[Tinhampton]

Following in the lead of Ballotpedia themselves, a definitely inconspicuous link to the Documenting America's Path to Recovery homepage has been added to the OP.

Mexico joins the list of countries admitting that their covid death figures were lower than the actual toll-catapulting from 201,429 deaths to 321,000. The 60% jump puts it ahead of Brazil, making it the country with the second most deaths worldwide.

It's worth noting that all six of the coronavirus trackers linked to in the OP I definitely did not add the WHO Dashboard around the same time I added the Ballotpedia microsite continue to cite Mexico's death count as approximately 200,000.

[North Washington Republic]

Meanwhile, vaccines

President Biden is set to announce that 90 percent of U.S. adults will be eligible for vaccination and will have a vaccination site within 5 miles of where they live by April 19, the White House said Monday.
Biden will also announce in a speech Monday afternoon that the number of pharmacies in the federal vaccination program will more than double, from 17,000 to 40,000, by the same date.

*does a happy dance*

The only problem we have now is convicting Trump supporting men to get vaccinated.

[Kowani]

Judge orders New York to provide prisoners with COVID-19 vaccines

The Times notes that at least 1,100 New York prisoners have tested positive for the coronavirus in the last month and five have died. The order now makes New York one of only a handful of states vaccinating a broad prison population.

Prisoners also risk exposure from staff members who go in-between prison facilities and the outside world. Until the judge's order, correctional staff were eligible to receive doses while prisoners were not. The judge wrote that leaving prisoners ineligible was "unfair and unjust” and an “abuse of discretion.”

States around the country have been varied in their approaches to vaccinating incarcerated persons. A lawsuit in Oregon last month also resulted in an order for the state to vaccinate all persons in its jails or prisons. But states like Florida, in contrast, have not made vaccine doses available to people behind bars. Texas and Arkansas have only just made doses available to select prisoner groups. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends vaccinating "staff and incarcerated/detained persons of correctional or detention facilities at the same time because of their shared increased risk of disease."

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Judge orders New York to provide prisoners with COVID-19 vaccines

The Times notes that at least 1,100 New York prisoners have tested positive for the coronavirus in the last month and five have died. The order now makes New York one of only a handful of states vaccinating a broad prison population.

Prisoners also risk exposure from staff members who go in-between prison facilities and the outside world. Until the judge's order, correctional staff were eligible to receive doses while prisoners were not. The judge wrote that leaving prisoners ineligible was "unfair and unjust” and an “abuse of discretion.”

States around the country have been varied in their approaches to vaccinating incarcerated persons. A lawsuit in Oregon last month also resulted in an order for the state to vaccinate all persons in its jails or prisons. But states like Florida, in contrast, have not made vaccine doses available to people behind bars. Texas and Arkansas have only just made doses available to select prisoner groups. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends vaccinating "staff and incarcerated/detained persons of correctional or detention facilities at the same time because of their shared increased risk of disease."

It had to be ordered? Wow. NY you rather inhumane.

[Shazbotdom]

So, Today I got the first half of the Microchip injected into me.




For those who are thinking about reporting me, that was sarcasm...

[Kowani]

Stanford scientists reverse-engineered the Moderna vaccine and posted the mRNA sequence on Github

Stanford scientists saved drops of the COVID-19 vaccine destined for the garbage can, reverse engineered them, and have posted the mRNA sequence that powers the vaccine on GitHub for all to see. The GitHub post is four pages long. The first two are an explanation by the team of scientists about the work, the second two pages are the entire mRNA sequence for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. “RNA vaccines have become a key tool in moving forward through the challenges raised both in the current pandemic and in numerous other public health and medical challenges,” the scientists said on GitHub. “Despite their ubiquity, sequences are not always available for such RNA. Standard methods facilitate such sequencing.”

According to Stanford scientists Andrew Fire and Massa Shoura, this isn’t technically “reverse-engineering” a vaccine. “We didn't reverse engineer the vaccine. We posted the putative sequence of two synthetic RNA molecules that have become sufficiently prevalent in the general environment of medicine and human biology in 2021,” they told Motherboard in an email. “As the vaccine has been rolling out, these sequences have begun to show up in many different investigational and diagnostic studies. Knowing these sequences and having the ability to differentiate them from other RNAs in analyzing future biomedical data sets is of great utility.”

The scientists were light on details about how they acquired the Moderna sample. “For this work, RNAs were obtained as discards from the small portions of vaccine doses that remained in vials after immunization; such portions would have been required to be otherwise discarded and were analyzed under FDA authorization for research use,” they said. Fire and Shoura explained that none of what they studied came from usable vaccines. “This project did not waste vaccine material or reduce in any way the number of vaccine doses available to the public,” they told Motherboard. “None of the residual ‘dregs’ that we used for this work came from vaccines that could have been otherwise administered. Think of the thin layer of milk coating a carton that had been fully used and emptied yesterday and sitting on the kitchen counter—if we sequenced that, we'd get a full picture of the cow genome even though the small quantity of milk would be of no use.”

The scientists requested permission from the FDA to keep emptied vials that were going to be discarded at Stanford and Veteran’s Affairs vaccination sites. “Given the ability of Next Generation Sequencing technology to detect even minuscule amounts of RNA, this was more than sufficient to assemble a coding region for the two vaccine RNAs,” they said. [...]According to Shoura and Fire, the FDA cleared the Stanford project’s decision to share the sequence with the community. “We did contact Moderna a couple of weeks ago to indicate that we were hoping to include the sequence in a publication and asking if there was anything that we should reference with respect to this... no response or objection from them, so we assume that everyone is busy doing important work.”

This is all exciting, and it’s great for the public to have access to the mRNA code that’s part of a vaccine many of us are injecting into our bodies. It also probably won’t make more people get the vaccine. The supply chain behind this kind of medicine is complicated and isn't easily DIYed. It's worth noting, however, that this sort of research makes information about the vaccine more accessible to everyone, which is a big deal considering the patents that big pharma has on many of the vaccines, and the fact that the world has a massive task ahead of it in trying to distribute the vaccine to billions of people around the world.

“Nobody will be making an mRNA vaccine in their garage any time soon,” engineer Jason Neubert said in a blog post about the reverse-engineered Pifzer vaccine.

The full GitHub post can be found here

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Woah. FL is moving quick. I preregistered yesterday to schedule my vaccination. 40+ people can get vaccinated starting today. The FL health department called me today to schedule my vaccination appointments. I’ll get a call tomorrow from them to do just that. I thought I was going to have to wait a long time for scheduling, but apparently not. Cool.

[Juristonia]

So, Today I got the first half of the Microchip injected into me.




For those who are thinking about reporting me, that was sarcasm...

I bet Bill Gates made you add that disclaimer.

[The Alma Mater]

Well, drama in the Netherlands. Several (reformed) churches in the more fundamentalist parts of the Netherlands decided to stop honouring the corona measures completely last weekend and opened their doors. Churchgoers were not happy with the ensuing media attention with several incidents - one journalist was kicked in his stomach and another one was hit by a car. Representatives of the churches in question defended those actions, stating journalists were "nazis", "imbeciles" and "terrorists". One Pastor also declared that vaccines are poison and are killing children en masse.

Otoh: this morning a small explosion occured at one of the churches. No injuries - but it seems to be getting grim.
As if the weekly protests in Amsterdam that always end in the police using watercannons were not enough already.

[Rusozak]

I got my second dose of the Moderna vaccine yesterday, and now I feel like I've been hit by a bus. I don't know if that's good or bad, but at least I know it did something.

[Ethel mermania]

I got my second dose of the Moderna vaccine yesterday, and now I feel like I've been hit by a bus. I don't know if that's good or bad, but at least I know it did something.

If you still feel it 24 hours from now reach out to your medic. A lot of my friends who have had the shot reported the same

[Ifreann]

Stanford scientists reverse-engineered the Moderna vaccine and posted the mRNA sequence on Github

[...]

The full GitHub post can be found here

Awesome. Should make for an increase in the supply of vaccines, especially in poorer countries.

[Cultural Posadism]

Stanford scientists reverse-engineered the Moderna vaccine and posted the mRNA sequence on Github

Stanford scientists saved drops of the COVID-19 vaccine destined for the garbage can, reverse engineered them, and have posted the mRNA sequence that powers the vaccine on GitHub for all to see. The GitHub post is four pages long. The first two are an explanation by the team of scientists about the work, the second two pages are the entire mRNA sequence for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. “RNA vaccines have become a key tool in moving forward through the challenges raised both in the current pandemic and in numerous other public health and medical challenges,” the scientists said on GitHub. “Despite their ubiquity, sequences are not always available for such RNA. Standard methods facilitate such sequencing.”

According to Stanford scientists Andrew Fire and Massa Shoura, this isn’t technically “reverse-engineering” a vaccine. “We didn't reverse engineer the vaccine. We posted the putative sequence of two synthetic RNA molecules that have become sufficiently prevalent in the general environment of medicine and human biology in 2021,” they told Motherboard in an email. “As the vaccine has been rolling out, these sequences have begun to show up in many different investigational and diagnostic studies. Knowing these sequences and having the ability to differentiate them from other RNAs in analyzing future biomedical data sets is of great utility.”

The scientists were light on details about how they acquired the Moderna sample. “For this work, RNAs were obtained as discards from the small portions of vaccine doses that remained in vials after immunization; such portions would have been required to be otherwise discarded and were analyzed under FDA authorization for research use,” they said. Fire and Shoura explained that none of what they studied came from usable vaccines. “This project did not waste vaccine material or reduce in any way the number of vaccine doses available to the public,” they told Motherboard. “None of the residual ‘dregs’ that we used for this work came from vaccines that could have been otherwise administered. Think of the thin layer of milk coating a carton that had been fully used and emptied yesterday and sitting on the kitchen counter—if we sequenced that, we'd get a full picture of the cow genome even though the small quantity of milk would be of no use.”

The scientists requested permission from the FDA to keep emptied vials that were going to be discarded at Stanford and Veteran’s Affairs vaccination sites. “Given the ability of Next Generation Sequencing technology to detect even minuscule amounts of RNA, this was more than sufficient to assemble a coding region for the two vaccine RNAs,” they said. [...]According to Shoura and Fire, the FDA cleared the Stanford project’s decision to share the sequence with the community. “We did contact Moderna a couple of weeks ago to indicate that we were hoping to include the sequence in a publication and asking if there was anything that we should reference with respect to this... no response or objection from them, so we assume that everyone is busy doing important work.”

This is all exciting, and it’s great for the public to have access to the mRNA code that’s part of a vaccine many of us are injecting into our bodies. It also probably won’t make more people get the vaccine. The supply chain behind this kind of medicine is complicated and isn't easily DIYed. It's worth noting, however, that this sort of research makes information about the vaccine more accessible to everyone, which is a big deal considering the patents that big pharma has on many of the vaccines, and the fact that the world has a massive task ahead of it in trying to distribute the vaccine to billions of people around the world.

“Nobody will be making an mRNA vaccine in their garage any time soon,” engineer Jason Neubert said in a blog post about the reverse-engineered Pifzer vaccine.

The full GitHub post can be found here

Based.

[Ifreann]

Stanford scientists reverse-engineered the Moderna vaccine and posted the mRNA sequence on Github

[...]

The full GitHub post can be found here

Based.

Guess it's hard to keep a lid on your intellectual property when you're injecting it into loads of people.

[San Lumen]

https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science ... /B1ItnyySd

Study shows no vaccine-resistant mutation exists in Israel