When will this shit end?

[fraybentos1]

7 hours ago, Ozanne said:

Mainly because the majority of posts from that person are criticising regulars in here that contribute a lot to the discussion. I make no apology for actually liking and being invested in a political leader. 

Slight hyperbole lol. The board is better for differing opinions imo. You're so precious. It's more than liking him it is just weird at this point, and I say that as someone who likes Starmer.

 

 

[Ozanne]

1 minute ago, fraybentos1 said:

Slight hyperbole lol. The board is better for differing opinions imo. You're so precious. It's more than liking him it is just weird at this point, and I say that as someone who likes Starmer.

 

 

Can you get back on topic please?

[zahidf]

24 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

I'd never considered this angle - do you mean that NHS staff are disproportionately represented in the phase 3 trials? I suppose it makes sense, because their increased exposure to the virus means protection of the vaccine will be easier to pick up statistically speaking.

Is it part of the Trial or post trial?

[squirrelarmy]

[fraybentos1]

9 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

Can you get back on topic please?

You might be the most highly strung guy on the planet 😂

[Toilet Duck]

20 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Just seen some scientists getting excited about their latest bit of research, but the implications are lost on me. Potential for therapeutics?

Professor @Toilet Duck?

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/10/22/2016650117

 

So, basically, interferons are the first line of intracellular defence against viral infection. When a cell gets infected with a virus, it typically switches on the interferon response and this warns the surrounding cells and recruits the antiviral parts of our immune system to kill the infected cell. Suppression of the interferon response has been noted for some time in COVID patients with severe disease, indeed it was discussed in this very thread many months ago! That discovery led to a massive trial to look at whether interferon therapy would be useful to treat severe COVID (more on that in a mo).

The paper above sheds some light on the molecular mechanism behind how SARS-CoV-2 blocks the interferon response. An even better paper describing how it happens was published in Cell a few weeks ago (https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31310-6). Basically, the virus is pretty sneaky. In order to mount an interferon response, the infected cell needs to make the interferon, however, the machinery inside the cell to do so is completely disrupted once the cell becomes infected (the virus basically directs the host cell machinery to make more virus and not the things the cell would normally make to get rid of it). Anyway, all of these papers help us to understand the pathogenesis of the virus at a molecular level and do potentially identify new targets for therapeutics (if you can block the virus doing what it is doing inside the cell, then the cell should respond normally to being infected). The logical endpoint of that is, well, why don't we just replace the interferon that is no longer being made, and maybe this will make things better? 

Alas, that hasn't panned out. The SOLIDARITY trial looked at remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, interferon and the HIV drug lopinivir  in a massive randomised trial (with over 11,000 patients) and found little or no benefit in terms of survival in hospitalised COVID patients (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.15.20209817v1). The paper is currently on medRxiv, but expected to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine in the next few days. Remdesivir as it happens has literally just been approved by the FDA for the treatment of COVID requiring hospitalisation (full approval, not EUA), even though according to the WHO study linked above (SOLIDARITY was a WHO trial) it only reduced relative risk of death by about 5% (the actual mortality was 11% in the Remdesivir arm vs 11.2% in the control arm, basically a 0.2% reduction in absolute mortality, which could quite easily arise by chance). That's pretty flimsy to be honest, though the company have been angling for approval on the basis that they say it reduces hospitalisation times even though it has no effect on mortality, and it looks like the FDA bought it (the WHO study above doesn't even show support for this as it happens, they found that patients required ventilation at pretty much the same time whether they took Remdesivir or not, so the clinical course of disease was not really altered...however, the company say that specific patients benefit and the WHO study gave it to too many different types of patient. They don't really know which patients should get it mind you, so that too is a flimsy argument at the moment, even though it's completely normal for some drugs to work in some patients and not in others...it's the entire basis of precision medicine, so hopefully they'll figure it out!). The other drugs actually had a relative risk that was higher than not treating (indeed, hydroxycholoroquine and lopinivir were dropped from the study after the RECOVERY trial data from the UK showed they didn't work)...So unfortunately, while suppression of the Interferon response is a key feature of severe COVID, simply putting it back doesn't appear to help things. However, when it gets given remains a key open question. Treating hospitalised patients with it may be a case of closing the door after the horse has bolted. Given early on, it could do what it is supposed to do and this hasn't been assessed yet, so there's hope for it yet. 

[Ozanne]

2 minutes ago, fraybentos1 said:

You might be the most highly strung guy on the planet 😂

You clearly don’t like me or what I post, so I suggest you put me on ignore. Now as I know you don’t it when threads go off topic I suggest we end it here. 

[Toilet Duck]

46 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

More good news (sorry if already posted)

AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson get go-ahead from Food and Drug Administration after pausing studies when volunteers became ill

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/24/coronavirus-vaccine-final-stage-testing-to-restart-in-us

The J&J vaccine is the only one so far that showed a big reduction in upper respiratory tract viral loads at the pre-clinical stage, so big hopes that that one will actually help prevent infection as well as warding off severe disease (not completely sterilising, but hopefully enough to reduce transmission significantly). They also have massive manufacturing capacity (over a billion doses per year as I recall) so, really hope this one makes it over the line!

[stuartbert two hats]

3 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

The J&J vaccine is the only one so far that showed a big reduction in upper respiratory tract viral loads at the pre-clinical stage, so big hopes that that one will actually help prevent infection as well as warding off severe disease (not completely sterilising, but hopefully enough to reduce transmission significantly). They also have massive manufacturing capacity (over a billion doses per year as I recall) so, really hope this one makes it over the line!

Was that in a challenge trial with chimps like the Oxford vaccine?

[Toilet Duck]

1 hour ago, stuartbert two hats said:

But anyway, any new corroboration of the December roll out is welcome, even if it is from the Mail.

Head of Pfizer Ireland said today that they expect to be vaccinating frontline healthcare staff and nursing home residents in Ireland by Christmas. EU currently negotiating a deal (we don't actually have one with Pfizer yet!) and it is being made in Belgium...100m doses ready to go already (some of the analytical work was carried out at the Pfizer facility in Dublin where their European biotherapeutics division is based). So, more and more noise saying roughly the same thing. 

[Toilet Duck]

3 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Was that in a challenge trial with chimps like the Oxford vaccine?

Yep, Rhesus macaques I believe. I'd have to dig it up, can't exactly recall where I read it. 

 

Edit: Nope, it was hamsters!

Edited October 24, 2020 by Toilet Duck
clarification

[zahidf]

9 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

Head of Pfizer Ireland said today that they expect to be vaccinating frontline healthcare staff and nursing home residents in Ireland by Christmas. EU currently negotiating a deal (we don't actually have one with Pfizer yet!) and it is being made in Belgium...100m doses ready to go already (some of the analytical work was carried out at the Pfizer facility in Dublin where their European biotherapeutics division is based). So, more and more noise saying roughly the same thing. 

If that is the case, I suspect.... that compliance with social distancing will go way down. Its already a little dicey, and if the most vulnerable can get vaccinated....

[Ozanne]

This made me chuckle. 

 

[stuartbert two hats]

8 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

Yep, Rhesus macaques I believe. I'd have to dig it up, can't exactly recall where I read it. 

 

Edit: Nope, it was hamsters!

Hamsters?? Are they close enough in physiology to draw those kinds on conclusions?

[Toilet Duck]

Just now, zahidf said:

If that is the case, I suspect.... that compliance with social distancing will go way down. Its already a little dicey, and if the most vulnerable can get vaccinated....

Problem is that 100m doses is not enough to protect all frontline healthcare staff and the most vulnerable in the US, EU, UK, and further afield (the various places that have deals with Pfizer), so even though they may start this year, it'll still take a while (requiring us to hang on a bit longer with the current state of affairs). But, the Moderna vaccine looks like its only a couple of weeks behind the Pfizer one (they plan on applying for FDA EUA before the end of November as well) and add in the Oxford/AZ one, and we might be getting towards a decent stock of usable vaccine. All of them have been manufacturing at risk and to significant scale. That would mean all 3 front runners making the cut, which would be extraordinary (but looking more likely). Two of which are RNA vaccines, so the first real test of our capacity for rapid vaccine development looks to be pretty good so far (hopefully not too good to be true!). 

[Toilet Duck]

5 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Hamsters?? Are they close enough in physiology to draw those kinds on conclusions?

Actually, they are better than non human primates as they are more prone to severe disease. J&J used macaques for their first round of pre-clinical testing, saw that it worked pretty well, then moved to hamsters...it was published in Nature Medicine a while back.

[stuartbert two hats]

2 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

Actually, they are better than non human primates as they are more prone to severe disease. J&J used macaques for their first round of pre-clinical testing, saw that it worked pretty well, then moved to hamsters...it was published in Nature Medicine a while back.

Well I never!

[Toilet Duck]

Just now, stuartbert two hats said:

Well I never!

Here you go! https://www.pnas.org/content/117/28/16587

[steviewevie]

Poor little hamsters.

[steviewevie]

Rush for results could lead to inferior Covid vaccine, say scientists

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/25/rush-for-results-could-lead-to-inferior-covid-vaccine-say-scientists

[eFestivals]

9 hours ago, Ozanne said:

They won’t be rolling out a mass vaccination programme before Christmas, they can barely test and trace 100k people a week. Sure they might be able to get some vaccine out to staff but this is the same government we criticise every day for being useless, front page of the Mail won’t change that. What is said on that front page would be ambitious even for a vaguely competent administration.

they've already rolled out a mass vaccination programme before xmas, for the flu jab.  

The covid vax is having new improved plans made so it can be rolled out even faster. It's the one part of everything I reckon our useless govt stand a chance of doing right.

Having said that, whether it can actually be rolled out faster depends on having enough vaccine - which is far from certain, and I'm quite happy for the UK not to put itself at the front of the world queue.

[Ozanne]

Some info of what you should do if you anyone gets the new iPhones:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54675352

Edited October 25, 2020 by Ozanne

[JoeyT]

15 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

Some info of what you should do if you anyone gets the new iPhones:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54675352

I’ve got one having transferred back to IOS and IPhone 12 from a Samsung S10.

Haven’t had any issues as far as I’m aware with the NHS app but will keep an eye.

Thanks for highlighting.

On an iPhone theme though must admit this phone is ticking the boxes. Much less of a brick than my wife’s iPhone 11!

[Crazyfool01]

Coronavirus: 14-day quarantine for Covid contacts could be reduced https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54678809
 

hopefully this will potentially help our shit compliance 

[Ozanne]

19 minutes ago, JoeyT said:

I’ve got one having transferred back to IOS and IPhone 12 from a Samsung S10.

Haven’t had any issues as far as I’m aware with the NHS app but will keep an eye.

Thanks for highlighting.

On an iPhone theme though must admit this phone is ticking the boxes. Much less of a brick than my wife’s iPhone 11!

I’m a big sucker for tech and get a new iPhone every year. I love them, the build quality is too tier. 

I think you should be fine if you went from an Android to iPhone. Enjoy your new phone!