Looking around for mixmatch info on Sinovac - HK has one going. Mixed trials One mixed trial involving a Chinese vaccine is already underway on Chinese soil in Hong Kong. In March, Hong Kong University's Department of Medicine announced that it was recruiting participants for a trial that would mix doses of China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine and Germany's BioNTech vaccine. The trial, which will involve roughly 150 volunteers over the age of 18, will give participants four different vaccine regimens. One group will get a BioNTech dose followed by the Sinovac dose, while other groups will get full regimens of either BioNTech's vaccine, Sinovac's shot, or placebo jabs. Dr. Ivan Hung, a professor at Hong Kong University and adviser to the city's COVID-19 response, said in late March that the research will be important to determine if mixing the vaccine jabs boosts immunity against COVID-19. But he said that because of a lack of clinical data he does not currently recommend that Hong Kong mix vaccine doses. The outcome of the trial may have implications for China. China has secured 100 million doses of BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine, but regulators have yet to approve it for distribution within China even though the shot has been approved in Hong Kong and dozens of other countries around the world. Experts told Fortune in March that China may be delaying its approval due to a preference for China-made jabs. But Gao's comments hint that China's attitude toward mRNA vaccines like BioNTech's may be changing. On Saturday, Gao told the conference that China should “consider the benefits” of mRNA vaccines and “not ignore” them. Other mixed-vaccine trials are also underway in other parts of the world using different types of vaccines. China's CanSino Biologics is reportedly involved in discussions with Russia's Sputnik 5 vaccine makers to conduct a two-dose mixed trial using CanSino's one-shot adenovirus shot and Sputnik's viral vector jab. In the U.K., AstraZeneca and BioNTech also launched the world's first mixed-vaccine trial involving over 800 volunteers. https://fortune.com/2021/04/12/covi...china-coronavirus-vaccines-can-they-be-mixed/
he Department of Science and Technology will study how the COVID-19 vaccine made by Chinese firm Sinovac works with other brands, with June as the target start, its chief said on Monday. In the trial, around 3,000 participants who received Sinovac's CoronaVac will be given another brand to complete their second dose. The study, to be funded by DOST, aims to find the safety and immunogenicity of "mixing-and-matching" different brands. "Combinations of Sinovac vaccine with other vaccine brand will be the main aim of the study due to it being the most stable vaccine supply in the country," Secretary Fortunato dela Peña said in a statement. Aside from Sinovac, the Philippines has granted emergency use authorization to AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, Moderna, Pfizer, Covaxin, and single dose Johnson&Johnson. DOST's trial is slated on June 2021 to November 2022. The official, however, clarified that DOST has yet to receive the go-signal for the study from the Food and Drug Administration and the Philippine Health Research Ethics Board. The proposed study sites are Antipolo or Marikina City, Manila, Pasig City, Makati or Pasay City, Muntinlupa City, Quezon City, Cebu, and Davao. https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2021/5/24/DOST-mix-match-COVID-19-brands-Sinovac.html
It was only in 2004 that a prominent virologist, Peter Palese, wrote that Chi-Ming Chu, a respected virologist and a former member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told him that “the introduction of this 1977 H1N1 virus” was indeed thought to be due to vaccine trials involving “the challenge of several thousand military recruits with live H1N1 virus.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html
I'm a bit confused with this one. In one paragraph they say that nearly all deaths are from unvaccinated people but in the next paragraph they say there isn't enough data to come to such a conclusion. I'm don't question that vaccinations reduce the chances of death from covid but with the limited data available and underreported breakthrough infections, according to their own reporting, makes coming up with any meaningful numbers or definitive and blanket conclusions/statements (such as deaths could be down to basically zero if everyone was vaccinated) impossible to make.
I'm not sure, but I think you are reading two different things. One is - this is what the data says now. Two is - we don't have the years of data like other diseases, so this could change. Underreported breakthrough is highly likely people who weren't hospitalized or died. So, if you're asymptomatic and no test, you never know. Some people won't go in until they're really ill, so they recover and are not counted. I've never read deaths could be down to zero, since we can't vaccinate everyone, but up to 95% could be. It is what it is, the stats show the bulk of deaths are in the unvaccinated. No mention of Long Covid.
Here is what I read: Statement one: "Nearly all COVID-19 deaths are now in people who aren't vaccinated." Statement two from the same article: "The AP analyzed figures provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC itself has not estimated what percentage of hospitalizations and deaths are in fully vaccinated people, citing limitations in the data." The AP says they came to this conclusion (statement one) by examining CDC data but the CDC says such a conclusion can't currently be made using this data due to reporting limitations (statement two). You can't know what the ratio of deaths is when you have incomplete data on the fully vaccinated. I'm sure it is lower in the vaccinated but the AP is jumping the gun and making a statement not based on facts and known numbers.
Thanks. Now I know what you are looking at. I was looking at the wrong article. The AP analyzed figures provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC itself has not estimated what percentage of hospitalizations and deaths are in fully vaccinated people, citing limitations in the data. *Among them: Only about 45 states report breakthrough infections, and some are more aggressive than others in looking for such cases. So the data probably understates such infections, CDC officials said.* So it explains part of the limitations. We don't know which states, but 45 is sizeable, etc. The CDC collects all breakthrough data from certain designated states because it researches breakthrough cases. They made a decision, and were criticized, not to collect all the data from every state. So the CDC is going to have to be very careful on the statistical analysis of those states. They will want a longer period because whatever they say will be roundly criticized from all sides, and misinterpreted. But the AP doesn't have to do that. They can just report the data they have and the easy conclusions drawn from it. The CDC wants to wait and make whatever they say as bullet proof as possible.
You misunderstand the math of the situation. R0 (pronounced “R naught) is the term that represents how contagious an infectious disease is. R0 tells you the average number of people who will contract a contagious disease from one person with that disease. It specifically applies to a population of people who were previously free of infection and are not taking steps to resist infection. When R0 is reduced to a number less than one the contagion will reduce until it disappears. R0 can be reduced in many ways. Steps to resist infection and reduce R0 include wearing a mask, getting vaccinated, etc. China is an example of how a community can reduce R0 and get the deaths down to basically zero by enacting strict contact tracing and isolation behaviors. This is why the entire population does not need to be vaccinated to eradicate the disease. A community only needs to vaccinate enough of the population to get the R0 down to less than one. The percentage of the vaccinated population ranges from 50% to 90% depending on how contagious the disease is. Vaccination can be combined with contact tracing and isolation to reduce R0 further. The result of the current vaccination efforts show that the rate of growth of the number of cases is negative (R0 less than one) therefore we can reason that deaths will be down to basically zero when enough people get vaccinated. The point being is that we do not need to know the exact number for R0. We only need to know that it is less than one.
