BlackMask Breaking News

LONDON (AP) — AstraZeneca and Oxford University on Wednesday acknowledged a manufacturing error that is raising questions about preliminary results of their experimental COVID-19 vaccine. A statement describing the error came days after the company and the university described the shots as “highly effective” and made no mention of why some study participants didn’t receive as much vaccine in the first of two shots as expected. In a surprise, the group of volunteers that got a lower dose seemed to be much better protected than the volunteers who got two full doses. In the low-dose group, AstraZeneca said, the vaccine appeared to be 90% effective. In the group that got two full doses, the vaccine appeared to be 62% effective. Combined, the drugmakers said the vaccine appeared to be 70% effective. But the way in which the results were arrived at and reported by the companies has led to pointed questions from experts. The partial results announced Monday are from large ongoing studies in the U.K. and Brazil designed to determine the optimal dose of vaccine, as well as examine safety and effectiveness. Multiple combinations and doses were tried in the volunteers. They were compared to others who were given a meningitis vaccine or a saline shot.

DID RESEARCHERS MEAN TO GIVE A HALF DOSE?

Before they begin their research, scientists spell out all the steps they are taking, and how they will analyze the results. Any deviation from that protocol can put the results in question.

In a statement Wednesday, Oxford University said some of the vials used in the trial didn’t have the right concentration of vaccine so some volunteers got a half dose.

The university said that it discussed the problem with regulators, and agreed to complete the late stage trial with two groups. The manufacturing problem has been corrected, according to the statement. Experts say the relatively small number of people in the low dose group makes it difficult to know if the effectiveness seen in the group is real or a statistical quirk. Some 2,741 people received a half dose of the vaccine followed by a full dose, AstraZeneca said. A total of 8,895 people received two full doses. Another factor: none of the people in the low-dose group were over 55 years old. Younger people tend to mount a stronger immune response than older people, so it could be that the youth of the participants in the low-dose group is why it looked more effective, not the size of the dose. Another point of confusion comes from a decision to pool results from two groups of participants who received different dosing levels to reach an average 70% effectiveness, said David Salisbury, and associate fellow of the global health program at the Chatham House think tank. “You’ve taken two studies for which different doses were used and come up with a composite that doesn’t represent either of the doses,″ he said of the figure. “I think many people are having trouble with that.″

Airlines have loudly insisted that it’s safe to fly during the coronavirus pandemic, and U.S. travel is surging before the Thanksgiving holiday despite a nationwide spike in virus cases.

Yet top U.S. infectious-disease experts say the findings underpinning the carriers’ safety claims aren’t that conclusive.

Concerned about the “misinterpretation” of their findings, researchers on a Defense Department study that has been widely cited by the industry added a cautionary revision.

A senior expert in travel-health issues declined to participate in an airline trade group’s news conference, citing what he called their “bad math.”

“The airline industry got a little ahead of itself trying to say the risk is zero,” said David Freedman, a University of Alabama at Birmingham professor emeritus who balked at appearing with an International Air Transport Association event that cited his work. U.S. airlines, hit with an unprecedented drop in demand since the virus began spreading widely in March, are enjoying their strongest week since then. Even as health officials warn against travel during the Thanksgiving holiday because of a surge in covid-19 cases, more than 4 million people traversed airports between Friday and Monday. The risk of being infected with the novel coronavirus on planes, which have highly effective filters that remove virus from the air and where mask usage is required, is probably fairly low, scientists say.

But the research is far from clear and some recent cases have documented transmission on flights even when passengers wore masks and sat far apart, according to a review of recent cases and interviews with academics and disease specialists.

“I definitely can say it’s premature to say that air travel is very safe,” said Qingyan Chen, an engineering professor at Purdue University in Indiana who’s written extensively on disease transmission on planes. Airline officials, responding to the historic drop in passengers, repeatedly have defended the protections against infection on flights. “Flying is safe,” Nicholas Calio, president of Airlines for America, a trade group for large carriers, said at a Nov. 12 briefing. “I will state that categorically.” A4A declined to add additional comments. It has highlighted the efforts to force passengers to wear masks and to remain apart during boarding and exiting, and to disinfect aircraft. Montreal-based IATA defended its use of Freedman’s data on confirmed in-flight transmissions, saying it never characterized the results as definitive. A4A frequently has cited a study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which was funded by the trade group and other aviation industry sources, that concluded the risk of transmission on an airliner was “very low.” But authors cautioned that their projections depended on adherence to mask usage and they also urged airlines to improve ventilation while planes are parked at the gate. Another study airlines point to was conducted by the Defense Department with the assistance of United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Boeing Co. It attempted to measure how aerosol virus particles were exhaled by a simulated masked passenger. United said in promotional materials released Oct. 15 the study “determined the risk is almost nonexistent.”

However, after news coverage of the study, the authors added a revision, saying they were “concerned about the potential misinterpretation of the findings.” They also acknowledged they based their results on a person exhaling relatively few virus particles, an amount well below levels documented in some cases.

The airplane filters and mask usage “significantly reduces” exposure to infectious aerosols, they wrote. “However, the current established scientific understanding of SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics is not sufficient to calculate definitive SARS-CoV-2 transmission risk from these measurements of aerosol transport The U.S. Centers for Disease Control summarizes the risks from air travel this way on its website: “Most viruses and other germs do not spread easily on flights because of how air circulates and is filtered on airplanes. However, keeping your distance is difficult on crowded flights, and sitting within six feet of others, sometimes for hours, may increase your risk of getting covid-19.” Purdue’s Chen said he’s been following news reports in China of possible infection between passengers on a Nov. 9 Air China flight from Los Angeles to Tianjin. Ten people who weren’t connected to one another and resided in different parts of the U.S. tested positive for the coronavirus after arrival. All the passengers had tested negative for the disease before the flight, suggesting at least some of the transmission occurred on the plane, he said.

Such incidents are confounding because they seem to contradict Chen’s own earlier research showing mask usage can dramatically lower risks of infection, he said.

“That’s why I’m having doubts about what’s going on in airplanes,” he said. Government researchers in Ireland documented as many as 13 cases linked to a single flight last summer, according to a paper published in October. The infections in five of the cases were genetically linked, “strongly suggesting a single point source of infection,” the authors said. The widebody jet was largely empty, people were spaced out on the plane and almost everyone whose activity could be documented said they wore masks. Nevertheless, the authors estimated that 10-18% of passengers became infected. “It is interesting that four of the flight cases were not seated next to any other positive case, had no contact in the transit lounge, wore face masks in-flight and would not be deemed close contacts under current guidance from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control,” the authors said. Nick Note: Proof your  stupid is you get on a airplane with your N95 joke toilet paper mask in hand. You fly you die or you give the gift that keeps on giving. The deadest plague in 100 years. People is it worth the risk?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record high of 30,000 on Tuesday, a symbolically significant benchmark in a year that has been whipsawed by the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and a bruising election cycle.

The Dow rose by over 450 points to close the day at 30,045, a record high for the blue-chip index. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite both climbed by around 1.5 percent.

Wall Street’s rally came a day after the Trump administration agreed to start the transition process to President-elect Joe Biden, giving him access to millions of dollars in federal funds and other resources to begin his transition to power.

The transition process had been stalled for weeks as President Donald Trump’s team waged a sputtering legal battle across the country to contest the results, leaving Biden out of the loop on the Covid-19 vaccine and other key issues.

Trump, who is facing mounting pressure to publicly concede, cheered the stock market rally Tuesday, telling reporters in the White House briefing room he wanted to “congratulate the people of our country because there are no people like you,” and called the Dow’s milestone a “sacred number.” Markets hit record highs this month after Moderna and Pfizer both announced promising vaccine candidates in the fight against Covid-19. Wall Street was also optimistic after former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen emerged as President-elect Joe Biden’s likely pick for treasury secretary. While Yellen faces a huge challenge to lead the country out of the pandemic amid millions of lost jobs and record debt levels, markets soared under her tenure at the Fed and she has decades of macroeconomic experience. During her four-year tenure at the Fed, Yellen supported the economic recovery through accommodative monetary policy and support for low interest rates.

In July, Yellen urged lawmakers to renew the emergency benefits created in the early days of the pandemic, telling members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis that it would be “a catastrophe” not to extend the $600 in additional weekly unemployment insurance for millions of out-of-work Americans. The additional benefits are a lifeline for those who are out of work, Yellen said, adding that, on a broader spectrum, “We need the spending that those unemployed workers can do.”

This market benchmark has been a long time coming. The Dow came within a few percentage points of hitting 30,000 back in January, a window of opportunity that seemed to slam shut when the Covid-19 pandemic led to widespread shutdowns, job losses and plunging gross domestic product. But aggressive rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and tech sector optimism had buoyed stocks, and the central bank’s interventions were accompanied by a run-up in the valuations of the big tech companies that increasingly dominate the benchmark indices, many of which benefitted from the abrupt and dramatic changes in consumer behavior triggered by the pandemic. “Anytime you have an accommodating Fed, low interest rates, more of an accommodative environment, the prospects are good for stocks,” said David Frisch, president of Frisch Financial Group. “Because of what’s transpired since March, a lot more of us are working from home, we’re doing things virtually, we’re streaming content online and ordering things to come to our homes,” said Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. In particular, Apple, Microsoft and Salesforce have helped propel the Dow higher. There also is an emotional dynamic that comes into play when markets near symbolic benchmarks. “There tends to be a bit of psychology and a market sentiment attached to some of those big levels,” said Yung-Yu Ma, chief investment strategist at BMO Wealth Management.

Analysts say investors should be wary of over-exuberance, given that it still could be months before a vaccine is readily available for most Americans.

“Even with the promise of an effective Covid-19 vaccine, we now have to take a sober look at the damage this virus has caused the economy,” said James McDonald, CEO of Hercules Investments, adding that a “return to normalcy” wouldn’t come right away. “An overnight recovery is impossible, let alone overnight growth that exceeds pre-Covid-19 level. Nick Note: For the record this is the biggest retail ma and pa Holkem retail rallie I have ever seen, It will end in treas…….

https://youtu.be/Je1jcG9dElE

 

WASHINGTON – With nationwide coronavirus hospitalizations topping 80,000 and case counts on the cusp of 200,000 a day, officials and experts are giving their final pleas for caution in the days before Thanksgiving.

Average cases reported each day in the United States have jumped nearly 15% in a week, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. Deaths are also on the rise, with some communities overwhelmed by the bodies

– in El Paso County, Texas, the National Guard was called in to help the morgues. With the holiday travel rush underway, public health leaders warned this weekend that “herd immunity” from promising vaccines remains months away and that every American’s choices this week will shape the country’s virus trajectory. In an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said he understands that many Americans are experiencing “covid fatigue” after months of pandemic restrictions, now tightening again in many parts of the country. But traveling over the holidays and ignoring public health guidelines are “going to get us into even more trouble than we’re in right now,” he said. Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser to the White House’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine effort, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that about 70% of the American population will need to be vaccinated for true herd immunity to occur. That will probably happen around May, he said, based on health officials’ current plans. “Most people need to be immunized before we can go back to a normal life,” he said. Some the front lines of the country’s pandemic response are not sure that months of messaging have gotten through to the public, however.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised Americans against Thanksgiving travel and get-togethers just days ago, when many people’s plans were already set.

“Absolutely not,” said Utah physician Sean Callahan when asked whether the urgency of the country’s situation has sunk in. He said soaring cases are already straining the quality of care at the University of Utah, where he works in one of the hospital’s intensive-care units and is an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care. His own message for people is about more than Thanksgiving plans. Callahan said he is concerned that nurses and physicians are already being asked to treat patients outside their usual areas of expertise. He thinks the problem will worsen. “I’m worried that we are going to be asking a lot of providers to do things that are probably outside of their comfort zone, and care is going to suffer, because we’re stretched and doing things we should not be doing,” he said in an interview Sunday. The pressure on health-care resources has spurred leaders nationwide into action. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, said this month that he was mandating face coverings statewide in public settings and for people within six feet of anyone outside their household. (The mandate does not apply to houses of worship.) The reversal, following months of reluctance, came after hospitals warned that they may have to ration care. Nevada Gov. Sisolak, a Democrat, on Sunday announced a “statewide pause” of at least three weeks starting Tuesday, with stricter capacity limits for many businesses, a decreased limit on gatherings and a more extensive mask mandate. Sisolak said people must wear face coverings even in private settings when they are around people outside their household. Ten percent of Nevada’s coronavirus cases were reported in the past week, he said, warning that hospitals could become overwhelmed. “You saw it in New York, you can see it in El Paso right now,” he said. “This can’t become our reality.” Los Angeles County, home to 10 million people, also announced new restrictions Sunday, ordering restaurants and bars to shift to takeout, drive-through and delivery only. As the alarms about hospital capacity mount, holiday travel and gatherings threaten to make health-care workers’ jobs even harder. Now holiday travel and gatherings threaten to make health-care workers’ tasks even harder. “If you look at the map of spread across the country, you can see the risk; it’s very visible. And moving through airports or travel hubs, I think that will increase people’s risk,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Even if they’re driving from point to point, unfortunately, we don’t know if we’re infected when we walk into a gathering.” He referred to recent data released by the CDC that said most infections are spread by people with no symptoms. “The message for everyone is: You can’t assume you don’t have the virus, and you can’t assume the people whose homes you’re about to enter don’t have the virus at this point in our pandemic,” Inglesby said. For those who plan to travel and be with others for the holiday, he recommended keeping gatherings small, spending as much time outdoors as possible, keeping mealtimes short, wearing masks indoors and removing masks only while eating.

More than 1 million people went through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints in airports nationwide on Friday, according to data released daily by the agency, and more than 980,000 travelers were screened Saturday. The number of travelers screened Friday was the second-highest single-day rush since March 16. In an interview aired on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Fauci was full of optimism about a vaccine but emphasized the virus’s continued threat.

“Traditionally and historically, highly efficacious and effective vaccines have crushed epidemics like smallpox and polio and measles,” Fauci told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We can do that with the vaccines that are going to be coming online. So we should make them be . . . an incentive to have us double down even more with public health measures until we get the full component of the help that’s on its way.” Pfizer filed for emergency authorization for its vaccine Friday. The FDA has announced that a committee of external advisers will meet Dec. 10 to make recommendations to the agency on whether to authorize Pfizer’s vaccine. Slaoui said the advisers will meet Dec. 17 to review the shot developed by Moderna, which has not filed for clearance for its vaccine. Officials’ calls to heed public health guidelines came as two more members of Congress, Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., and Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said Sunday that they tested positive for the coronavirus after experiencing mild symptoms and are isolating. Nick Note: You are being sold a bill of goods. Do you know how long it took to wipe out Polio: The Salk vaccine was developed in the 1950’s  it was not until  1961 that the infectious transmittal of the disease was stopped. AND Small Pocks?  The disease peeked in the 1950’s and was widespread until l 1966.  It took 16 years to get it under controls. Now they want you to believe they will get the far more contagious coronavirus under control in 5 months using vaccines that have not been approved never mind mass vaccinations have not even begun……. YET… YEAH RIGHT!!