Wow, People Really Have A Handle On This Coronavirus

Before one starts, let one define a vaccine and explain how it works:

Live, attenuated vaccines fight viruses and bacteria. ...

Inactivated vaccines also fight viruses and bacteria.  ...

Toxoid vaccines prevent diseases caused by bacteria that produce toxins (poisons) in the body. ...

Subunit vaccines include only parts of the virus or bacteria, or subunits, instead of the entire germ. ...

Conjugate vaccines fight a different type of bacteria. These bacteria have antigens with an outer coating of sugar-like substances called polysaccharides. This type of coating disguises the antigen, making it hard for a young child’s immature immune system to recognize it and respond to it. Conjugate vaccines are effective for these types of bacteria because they connect (or conjugate) the polysaccharides to antigens that the immune system responds to very well. ...

Vaccines help develop immunity by imitating an infection. This type of infection, however, almost never causes illness, but it does cause the immune system to produce T-lymphocytes and antibodies. Sometimes, after getting a vaccine, the imitation infection can cause minor symptoms, such as fever. Such minor symptoms are normal and should be expected as the body builds immunity.

Once the imitation infection goes away, the body is left with a supply of “memory” T-lymphocytes, as well as B-lymphocytes that will remember how to fight that disease in the future. However, it typically takes a few weeks for the body to produce T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes after vaccination. Therefore, it is possible that a person infected with a disease just before or just after vaccination could develop symptoms and get a disease, because the vaccine has not had enough time to provide protection.

 

How the coronavirus vaccines are supposed to work:

mRNA vaccines contain material from the virus that causes COVID-19 that gives our cells instructions for how to make a harmless protein that is unique to the virus. After our cells make copies of the protein, they destroy the genetic material from the vaccine. Our bodies recognize that the protein should not be there and build T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes that will remember how to fight the virus that causes COVID-19 if we are infected in the future.

Protein subunit vaccines include harmless pieces (proteins) of the virus that cause COVID-19 instead of the entire germ. Once vaccinated, our immune system recognizes that the proteins don’t belong in the body and begins making T-lymphocytes and antibodies. If we are ever infected in the future, memory cells will recognize and fight the virus.

Vector vaccines contain a weakened version of a live virus—a different virus than the one that causes COVID-19—that has genetic material from the virus that causes COVID-19 inserted in it (this is called a viral vector). Once the viral vector is inside our cells, the genetic material gives cells instructions to make a protein that is unique to the virus that causes COVID-19. Using these instructions, our cells make copies of the protein. This prompts our bodies to build T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes that will remember how to fight that virus if we are infected in the future.

 

But if people have already been exposed, knowingly or not, and recovered, why the vaccine and why extra doses?

Indeed: 

Last December, investigators conducted an anonymous survey of 3,523 employees of Yale Medicine and Yale Health System to determine their willingness to receive an FDA-approved vaccine. The survey’s response rate was low (just 11 percent), but 85 percent of respondents said that they were extremely likely or somewhat likely to get the vaccine; 14.7 percent were reluctant. Crucially, the top two reasons cited for reluctance were related to a desire for more follow-up data on safety. Less than 2 percent of the sample expressed an anti-vaccine perspective, saying that nothing would make them comfortable getting the vaccine. By contrast, a survey of approximately 250,000 U.S. households by the Census Bureau conducted in January 2021 found that about 9 percent said that they would definitely not get the vaccine. These data suggest that health-care workers’ reluctance may be less motivated by anti-vaccine sentiment than is reluctance among the general public.

Their doubts may simply reflect the newness of the vaccines. The two approved vaccines have received emergency-use authorization from the FDA. The criterion for that emergency approval was evidence that the vaccines prevented more infection in the vaccine group than in a placebo group and were free of serious side effects. The determination of the efficacy of the vaccine came from an interim analysis—a reliance on data collected from participants before they had completed the full two-year follow-up period. The data reviewed by the FDA from the trials showed a high level of short- and medium-term protection and very limited side effects—but the FDA could not conclude with a high degree of certainty that there is long-term protection or the absence of serious side effects. This may be the root cause of health-care workers’ reluctance.

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The turnaround offers insight into the complicated world long-term care staff have had to navigate throughout the pandemic – where more than anyone or anything else, they’ve turned to each other for guidance.

Samir Sinha, a geriatrician at Sinai Health Systems in Toronto, wasn’t surprised in the same way others were when he saw initial low rates of uptake among long-term care staff.

“They feel like they’re being treated as guinea pigs. And they’re being encouraged to get the vaccine by the same government that promised them an iron ring of protection, and really left them for dead,” Dr. Sinha said. Since last April, 11 staff have died and more than 6,400 have been sickened in Ontario.

Internal polling from the Ontario Personal Support Workers Association in mid-January showed that 79 per cent of personal support workers did not think vaccines should be mandated and 49 per cent said they were unsure about or against receiving it voluntarily.

 

Whatever the efficacy or inefficacy of these hastily-made vaccines, the point becomes moot when one realises that the same government that failed to prepare for contagions they knew were coming, that did not want the public to know how ill-prepared it was or that would not step up national or private efforts to assist the public in any way is still bungling every effort, relying on the public's unwillingness to challenge it or take matters into its own hands:

Anticipated monthly vaccine deliveries are “estimates” only and are not included in confidential $4.6 billion contracts with manufacturers, says Public Works Minister Anita Anand. MPs on the Commons health committee said it is mathematically impossible for cabinet to meet its vaccination targets: “No one in their right mind believes in the math you are telling us.”

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Canada’s languid vaccination efforts have no chance of improvement this week with just 70,200 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine scheduled to start arriving.

Provinces and territories have already administered almost 90 per cent of the vaccines they have been sent. With this week’s new deliveries, there will be fewer than a quarter million doses of vaccine available to be injected this week. ...

Moderna, the only other company with a vaccine approved in Canada so far, delivers its vaccine once every three weeks and its next scheduled shipment isn’t supposed to be until the week of Feb. 22.

The company also shorted Canada on expected doses during last week’s delivery, a problem the company attributed to a slower-than-expected ramp-up of production with its Swiss-manufacturing partner Lonza.

However Fortin said the company hasn’t given Canada a specific reason for the slowdown.

** 

Trudeau’s comments about the deal between the National Research Council and CanSino were brief but hopeful.

“If these vaccine trials are successful, we can produce and distribute it here at home,” he said at the time.

Three days later, the deal would start to unravel as the Chinese government blocked CanSino’s ability to export the material needed for Canada to take part in the clinical trials of the vaccine and to be a partner.

It turns out the Trudeau government didn’t have any further clinical trials and according to Procurement Minister Anita Anand, the government didn’t seek another partner to produce a vaccine in Canada until they were signing contracts in August and September of 2020.

By that time,it was too late. But according to Anand’s statements before the Commons Industry committee last Thursday,it was also something the government thought was impossible.

“The reality is that standing up new manufacturing of a vaccine requires expertise, it requires expertise from the supplier,” Anand said.

**

President Joe Biden plans to uphold the U.S. policy of guaranteeing that Americans will be inoculated first before the country shares its shots, despite requests for co-operation from Canada.

 

It's not just incompetence, though. It's contempt.

 

But flights from global hot-spots aren't banned, right?:

Canadian drivers returning home from the U.S. may be asked to prove they’re Covid-free though they cannot be barred from entering the country, says Public Safety Minister Bill Blair. Cabinet will impose new regulations on travelers at land crossings but with plenty of advance warning, he said: ‘All Canadians have a constitutional right of entry.’

 

Don't get one started on the forced isolation and the expense of it. 

 

Lockdowns. Don't. Work:

The Ontario government said the province will begin a phased reopening on Wednesday, however, a majority of regions will remain in lockdown amid the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Didn't we try this before?