And no needle to buy/dispose of/re-use and spread hep with.
Yeah I'd forgotten about those injectors... for a minute there, it sounded more like that time a coworker tried to make a fart sound with the air compressor nozzle on his arm.
I guess that's more like those injections we used to get where they'd use a space-age gun-lookin' thing. IIRC it hurt about the same but it was definitely over quick.
And no needle to buy/dispose of/re-use and spread hep with.
needle anxiety? the struggle is real (subcutaneous injection only - maybe for diabetics)
I guess that's more like those injections we used to get where they'd use a space-age gun-lookin' thing. IIRC it hurt about the same but it was definitely over quick.
Another interesting aspect of the vaccine: no needles. Doses are given not with a needle, but with an injector that uses a narrow, powerful stream of fluid to inject the DNA plasmids into the proper depth beneath the skin.
EXCUSE ME: WHAT? how is that an improvement over needles?
The three-dose vaccine uses genetic information to create an immune response to SARS-CoV-2âs spike protein, similar to the mRNA vaccines. But instead of RNA code for the spike protein, it uses a DNA version, delivered with a unique, needle-free system.
The manufacturer claims that the DNA vaccine is 66% effective in preventing symptomatic infections, the BBC reported â including the delta variant, which wreaked havoc in India earlier this year, before spreading around the world. However, as Quartz India pointed out, the data backing this up are not yet publicly available.
The company, Zydus Cadila, based in Ahmedabad, also notes that the DNA vaccine is Indiaâs first COVID-19 vaccine approved for 12-18 year olds. With only a hair over 9% of Indiaâs population fully vaccinated, the hope is that the vaccine, which is more stable than mRNA vaccines and does not need to be stored at sub-freezing temperatures, can help preempt another wave of infections.
âTo have a DNA vaccine which works against an infection is a big deal,â virologist Gagandeep Kang told the BBC. âIf it gives good protection this is something India will be proud of.â
What is a DNA vaccine? A DNA vaccine is similar to an mRNA vaccine, except it uses small, circular pieces of DNA â called plasmids â to deliver the âhey, make this antigenâ message.
So far, DNA vaccines have found the most success in animals; while they have a fine safety record in human trials â not integrating themselves into the hostâs DNA, as some had feared may be possible when the research was beginning years ago â the immune response they create has generally been disappointing compared to other vaccines. Still, a lot of research is ongoing, with the vast majority of DNA vaccine candidates focusing on cancer or HIV.
âPlasmid DNA vaccines have been tried in the past. But we know itâs very difficult to get plasmid DNA into the nucleus of human cells, especially in adults,â virologist Jeremy Kamil of the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center told the BBC.
Which makes seeing that data sooner rather than later particularly important.
âI would be delighted that a vaccine company overcame the immense challenges to make it work,â Kamil said. âBut itâs imperative that the efficacy data be vetted independently.â
The study: Cadila tested their DNA vaccine in 28,000 subjects across 50 sites, with 1,000 of them between the ages of 12-18.
In addition to being 66.6% effective against symptomatic cases, there was no moderate illness among those who received three doses, and no hospitalizations or deaths among subjects who received at least two doses of the DNA vaccine, the company said.
Another interesting aspect of the vaccine: no needles. Doses are given not with a needle, but with an injector that uses a narrow, powerful stream of fluid to inject the DNA plasmids into the proper depth beneath the skin.
Among the speakers were several known anti-vaccine doctors, including Dr. Christina Parks — a Ph.D. who pushes debunked theories about vaccines causing autism and the benefits of hydroxychloroquine.
At 1:30 she claims the CDC director "basically said that these vaccines have no ability to prevent infection by and transmission of the delta variant." I don't know what statement she's referring to;, so I went to the CDC website to check. If anybody at CDC ever said that they aren't saying it now.
The testimony above was 8/19/21 and this CDC guidance was issued 8/26 (updating an article from 7/27) both of which contradict the above claim. So I can't honestly say she's misrepresenting what the CDC director said, but the CDC's website does not and as far as I can find never has made that claim.
About 2:15 she claims that "the vaccinated and unvaccinated have similar amounts amounts of virus in their nose and throat." True as far as it goes...for vaccinated people who have breakthru infections. We have a limited amount of data on infection and transmission rates for the delta variant among the vaccinated, and that says the efficacy of vaccines drops from 90% against the Wuhan strain to 66% against the delta strain.
Vaccinated patients also reduce their viral load quicker (reducing the time they remain infectious) and have vastly higher survival and lower hospitalization rates. In the case she cites (with 74% of the infections being among vaccinated people) that might sound alarmingâare vaccinated people more vulnerable?âuntil you look at the population that got infected. Barnstable county has a vaccination rate of almost 80% of those eligible and 87% of those over 65. If the vaccination rate were 100% then 100% of infections would be among the vaccinated. That outbreak would have been far worse had no one been vaccinated.
So...she's wrong. Covid vaccines prevent infections. Not as well as they prevented the original recipe, but they still work.
On the pertussis vaccine she has a point. Yes, the vaccinated can be asymptomatic carriers...until their bodies fight off the infection. Then they are fully immune. If they spread to someone vulnerable while infectious that person can come down with whooping cough. How exactly does this make us worse off than no vaccine? Somebody explain that to me. And maybe to her.
As for flu vaccines...she's wrong. Period. Flu vaccines aren't as effective as covid vaccines, but they are still pretty effective. That effectiveness varies with the type of contagion but it's far better than nothing. And no, they don't (in general) have negative efficacy after the first year. On this she's simply wrong. There is a phenomenon (observed since the 1980s) where efficacy can go negative in some cases and with some variants with repeated vaccinations, but that isn't an indictment of getting a flu vaccine every year. Making yourself more vulnerable to the other variants for all those years to reduce vulnerability to a single variant once seems like a very bad bet.
She is claiming that the covid vaccines are leading to a phenomenon called Antibody-Dependent Enhancement, where antibodies attached to viruses make it more likely for a virus to infect a cell. This phenomenon has been well understood for decades and was taken into account in the development of the vaccines. Golly, the people doing the development even published about what they were doing.
But more important is the results on the ground. 90-95% of the patients in ICUs (and 99% of those dying) are unvaccinated. If the vaccines made you more vulnerable to infection the unvaccinated would be underrepresented, not overrepresented. This simply is not happening, and she should know this. Especially as the holder of a PhD, which she reminds us of several times.
And yes, she is correct about one thing: PhD holders, as a class, are the most vaccine-hesitant educational group as identified in this one very sloppily-conducted Facebook survey. That isn't PhDs in science or medical fields, just self-reported holders of PhDs in any discipline. Everybody else has become less hesitant over time, but the PhDs in this survey remain stubborn. Whatever.
Which leads to an underlying criticism of hr view: let's say she's right, and covid vaccines don't prevent transmission of the delta variant. Reducing your chance of dying from covid by a factor of 20 isn't enough? Seriously?
But that's a bunch of words, and even some math. Bo-ring! Here's a video by a bald man in a suit jacket. He doesn't offer financial advice for investors and I don't think he's ever performed stand-up comedy (but he has done at least one sort-of-humorous rap video, so that may take his credibility up a notch) but he explains why the vaccines are the best bet for staying alive thru covid and protecting other more-vulnerable people.
People who are infected with the highly contagious Delta variant are twice as likely to be hospitalized as those who are infected with the Alpha variant, according to a large new British study.
The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Friday, is an analysis of more than 40,000 coronavirus infections in England. It adds to evidence suggesting that Delta may cause more severe illness than other variants do.
Fewer than 2 percent of the infections occurred in fully vaccinated people, and there was not enough data to draw firm conclusions about hospitalization risks in that group specifically, the researchers said.
âThe main takeaway is that if you have an unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated population, then an outbreak of Delta can lead to a higher burden on hospitals, on health care, than an Alpha outbreak would,â said Anne Presanis, a senior statistician at the University of Cambridge and one of the studyâs lead authors.
The Delta variant, which was first detected in India, is roughly twice as infectious as the original virus and as much as 60 percent more transmissible than the Alpha variant, which was first identified in Britain. (...)
just thinking of how the delta variant started with one person maybe nine/ten months ago most of earth was aware of the virus after the original and successor variants in that short amount of time it has covered the globe, including island fortresses it really looks like everyone eventually has a date with c19 exposure
