Jonathan C. Roberts, CVS Health Corporation - Executive VP & COO: "I would just add that in our conversations with the pharmaceutical manufacturers, we're estimating about 500 million doses of vaccine between now and the end of June.So we think there's going to be good supply, and it should begin to open up in April."
Interesting article on the WHO investigation, from the WSJ
WUHAN, ChinaâThe virus that causes Covid-19 most likely jumped from one species to another before entering the human population and is highly unlikely to have leaked from a laboratory, a leader of a World Health Organization investigative team said at a press conference here.
In laying out the possibilities for the origin of the pandemic, the WHO team on Tuesday said it was also possible that the virus may have been transmitted to humans through imported frozen food, a theory heavily promoted by Beijing. But the team said the most likely scenario was one in which the virus spilled over naturally from an animal into humans, such as from a bat to a small mammal that then infected a person.
âDid we change dramatically the picture we had beforehand? I donât think so,â said Peter Ben Embarek, a Danish food-safety expert who spoke on behalf of the WHO delegation. âDid we improve our understanding? Did we add details to that picture? Absolutely.â
The preliminary assessment came during a press conference at the end of a four-week mission, which included two weeks of quarantine, to Wuhan, the original center of the pandemic. It comes more than a year after the virus first began spreading in China and around the globe, killing more than two million people.
After reviewing environmental samples from Wuhanâs Huanan Market, as well as thousands of biological samples and case files from more than 200 local hospitals, 17 Chinese and 17 WHO experts said the market was one place where the virus began spreading rapidly, but cautioned that it was impossible to say how the virus arrived there.
Several smaller outbreaks followed by early clusters in the market would have adhered to a âclassical picture of an emerging outbreak,â Dr. Ben Embarek said. However, he didnât rule out the possibility that the first outbreak could have occurred outside Wuhan, including in another Chinese province or in another country.
âThe market probably was a setting where that kind of spread could have happened easily, but that is not the whole story,â Dr. Ben Embarek said.
Another member of the WHO team, Peter Daszak, went further, telling reporters after the press conference that the focus of the investigation was shifting toward countriesâespecially in Southeast Asiaâthat could have been the source of animals or animal products sold in Wuhanâs Huanan Market.
âWeâve done a lot of work in China and if you map that back, it starts to point towards the border and we know there is very little surveillance on the other side in the whole region of Southeast Asia,â he said. âI think our focus needs to shift to those supply chains to the market, supply chains from outside China, even.â
The preliminary findings arenât likely to calm the political controversy around the investigation into the origins of the pandemic. Both Beijing and Washington traded blame throughout much of 2020 for the early spread of the virus, and the WHO visit was arranged only after lengthy negotiations with the Chinese government.
Many virologists outside China believe the first outbreak began within Chinese borders and are skeptical of the idea that imported frozen food ignited a global pandemic.
The WHO risks validating Chinese government claims that many scientists consider a far-fetched theory, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University.
âI would not give credence at this stage to Chinaâs story line about what it wants to project to the world. WHO has been on that path before and it should not get on that path again,â he said. âOne has to point out that this has taken place over a year laterâ¦Itâs like going to the scene of a crime a year later, when itâs been scrubbed. Itâs very hard to solve it.â
WHO researchers, including Dr. Ben Embarek, had previously deemed the likelihood of transmission to humans through frozen food as being very low. Only a handful of potential incidences of transmission have been documented during the past year.
âIt seems to be extremely rare, and that being the source of the infection seems to be extremely rare, and that is happening in a world where youâre having half a million cases now every day,â Dr. Ben Embarek said in a Jan. 31 interview. âTransposing that onto last year in Wuhan when the virus is not widely circulating in the world and thinking that could be the introduction is not the most likely scenario.â
Some scientists said they understood why the WHO is still considering the frozen-food scenario despite considering it unlikely. âI think the one thing that is really lost in all of this is that the entire investigation canât be separated from political considerations,â said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown Universityâs Center for Global Health Science and Security.
The type of investigation required to fully understand the origin of SARS-CoV-2 âcan take decades,â Dr. Rasmussen said. âThis trip is to lay the groundwork for longer-term studies that are required to look into the origins. This is like the keynote speech at the beginning of the conference, except the conference could take 20 years.â
Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology and pediatrics at the University of Iowa, has been studying coronaviruses for decades. He said regarding the tracing of SARS-CoV-2 to its origins, âIt is hard to know how to get the data to sort this out.â
Based on research on other coronaviruses, Dr. Perlman said the likeliest scenario is that SARS-CoV-2 originated as a bat virus that evolved to infect people. âThe issue in my mind is the virus infects people so well it had to somehow evolve before it even reached the Wuhan seafood market,â he said.
Dr. Perlmanâwho is also a member of The Lancet Covid-19 Commission, an international group set up in July 2020 to address the pandemicâsaid scientists were looking at multiple lines of inquiry to determine how the virus got into the wider population. They are trying to identify bat viruses that could be direct ancestors of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and are interested in testing blood samples for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in people who live near caves in Southeast Asia where bats roost, among other approaches.
âIf they had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 at a time when there was no Covid-19 in that region, thatâs a start at figuring out how it got into the wider population,â Dr. Perlman said, adding that the challenge may be that labs may not retain blood samples going back that far.
WHO researchers had said they would be open to pursuing the likelihood of a laboratory incident. In its final days, the Trump administration claimed to have evidence, which it didnât present to the public, that staff in one of the cityâs major laboratories fell ill with Covid-19-like symptoms in the fall of 2019.
But on Tuesday, the WHO team said it was reassured by hearing of the high biosafety protocols adhered to in the cityâs major labs, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lab also wasnât working with any virus closely linked to the one that causes Covid-19, Dr. Ben Embarek said.
âIt is very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place,â he said on Tuesday. âOf course this is not impossible. It happens once in a whileâ¦These are extremely rare events.â
Chinese health official Liang Wannian, meanwhile, pushed back on the likelihood that Huanan Market was the first place where the outbreak occurred, saying the date of onset of the earliest confirmed case was days earlier than that of the earliest confirmed case in the market. The majority of earlier confirmed cases didnât have any relationship to the market, he said.
Dr. Liang pointed to unpublished studies about cases that preceded Chinaâs, saying other countries could have missed early cases.
Giving weight to Beijingâs theory, Dr. Ben Embarek of the WHO said the virus could have taken a long and convoluted path involving movements across borders before arriving in the Huanan Market. He noted that frozen farm products were sold in the market and called for further studies on the source of animal products in the market as well as research on similar products still being sold elsewhere.
Going forward, WHO officials said they would like to see if early coronavirus cases occurred outside China before the Wuhan market outbreak. Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on the WHO team, said studies suggested there may have been cases in Italy in late November. âWe should really go and search for evidence of earlier circulation wherever that is indicated,â she said.
I recall hearing about earlier university research that speculate the virus was lab grown, due to how 'perfect' this virus was
From Alex Jones?
it's a theory on the unknown origin of the virus, not a conspiracy. you cannot rule out the fallibility of humans, especially with two labs so close to the apparent origin.
Hypothesis, or gossip in this case since there's no supporting material...
OK Again, I'm not basing on your referenced conspiracy theories. Not sure what your motivation is to keep pushing a one-sided agenda...is this a theme of yours? Why be such a fundamentalist?
I recall hearing about earlier university research that speculate the virus was lab grown, due to how 'perfect' this virus was
From Alex Jones?
it's a theory on the unknown origin of the virus, not a conspiracy. you cannot rule out the fallibility of humans, especially with two labs so close to the apparent origin.
Hypothesis, or gossip in this case since there's no supporting material...
I recall hearing about earlier university research that speculate the virus was lab grown, due to how 'perfect' this virus was
From Alex Jones?
it's a theory on the unknown origin of the virus, not a conspiracy. you cannot rule out the fallibility of humans, especially with two labs so close to the apparent origin.
The invention of Covid-19 vaccines will be remembered as a medical milestone. But many scientists are also seeking a vaccine that could work against all coronaviruses.
Researchers are starting to develop prototypes of whatâs known as a pancoronavirus vaccine, with some promising early results. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, thinks scientists should join together in another large vaccine-creation project.
âWe have to get a real work force to accelerate this so we can have it this year,â Dr. Topol said. He and Dennis Burton, a Scripps immunologist, called for this project on broad coronavirus vaccines on Monday in the journal Nature.
When coronaviruses were first identified in the 1960s, they did not become a high priority for vaccine makers. But in 2002, the coronavirus SARS-CoV emerged, causing a deadly pneumonia called severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
The danger of coronaviruses became even clearer in 2012 when a second species spilled over from bats, causing another deadly respiratory disease called MERS. Some researchers wondered whether it was really wise to make a new vaccine for each coronavirus â what Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, the director of Emerging Infectious Diseases Branch at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., calls âthe one bug, one drug approach.â
Wouldnât it be better, they thought, if a single vaccine could work against SARS, MERS and any other coronavirus?
In 2016, Maria Elena Bottazzi, a virologist at Baylor College of Medicine, and her colleagues applied for support from the U.S. government to develop a pancoronavirus vaccine but did not receive it. âThey said thereâs no interest in pancorona,â Dr. Bottazzi recalled.
Three years later, a third dangerous coronavirus emerged: the SARS-CoV-2 strain that causes Covid-19.
All of the lessons that researchers had learned about coronaviruses helped them move quickly to make new vaccines. The Covid-19 pandemic is still far from over, but a number of experts are calling for preparations for the next deadly coronavirus.
âThis has already happened three times,â said Daniel Hoft, a virologist at Saint Louis University. âItâs very likely going to happen again.â
Researchers at VBI vaccines, a Cambridge-based company, took a step toward creating a pancoronavirus vaccine last summer.
Last month, Pamela Bjorkman, a structural biologist at Caltech, and her colleagues published a more extensive experiment with a universal coronavirus vaccine in the journal Science.
And Dr. Modjarrad is leading a team developing another pancoronavirus vaccine. He expects clinical trials to start next month.
This was the first time we had the same lockdown rules as Melbourne, although the 5 km travel limit was loosely enforced. But I'm all in for short, sharp lockdowns if we can avoid ongoing community transmission. It's just a lot harder with the new variants.
I recall hearing about earlier university research that speculate the virus was lab grown, due to how 'perfect' this virus was
U.S. still hasn't ruled out lab accident origin for Covid
A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told NBC News the agency is standing by a public statement it issued in April, which said that that American intelligence agencies "will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."
I recall hearing about earlier university research that speculate the virus was lab grown, due to how 'perfect' this virus was
U.S. still hasn't ruled out lab accident origin for Covid
A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told NBC News the agency is standing by a public statement it issued in April, which said that that American intelligence agencies "will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."
I recall hearing about earlier university research that speculate the virus was lab grown, due to how 'perfect' this virus was
U.S. still hasn't ruled out lab accident origin for Covid
A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told NBC News the agency is standing by a public statement it issued in April, which said that that American intelligence agencies "will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."
You lied & had others lie so that your wife could get the vaccine based on a lie. Doesn't matter how qualified you are, you still have to book an appointment whenever they can work it in based on your state's circumstances. I'm qualified by age & underlying condition, I waited until my group was up & then waited until they could give me an appointment and showed up when they told me to come. Sorry my state has it's shit together on COVID. Meanwhile, my wife works at an architecture firm in their healthcare vertical (hospitals, clinics, doctors offices, etc in a multi-state region). SCL Health is one of their clients & they offered anyone in her company the vaccine if they come on SCL sites for projects. My wife does visit their sites but hasn't in the past almost year, so she declined the offer rather than take the place of an essential worker or others in great need, deciding to wait her turn. At 60, that will likely be months. The way karma works,cool that your wife scammed her way into a vaccine, at the expense of someone way down the that may not get their vaccine on time cause they ran out and will get the virus & be deathly ill or dead. But you'll never know that person, so.... whatever, right?
Pointing an others to make your own lies seem palatable is, well, mighty MAGA Trump of you. I would expect nothing more or less. So you got your vaccines in any way you could - I sincerely hope neither of you get COVID-19. I pity you that so many people here don't like you, but not my problem. Meanwhile, as far as RP goes, you're dead to me. Write whatever bullshit Qurtster response you want, I won't be reading it.
So you say. She and I are both qualified to receive the vaccine now due to the timetable in place. This is how you use the medical systems in place to work for you.
In the past you have had no problem in privately soliciting advice on how to best utilize the system for your own needs with the condition I not share these requests publicly. I have abided with your requests. That you find the need to try and shame and humiliate me now publicly for your own personal advancement and virtue signaling amongst your peers here at my expense frees me from your requests of privacy and discretion due to how others may look at you here simply by having any kind of association with me.
I can also say that you are dead to me here and ask that you seek medical counsel elsewhere and stop all pm's to me going forward. That your partisan ways interfere with your personal relationships is something to pity. But I cannot help that. Did not stop me from offering you or anyone else here what help and insight that I have to offer. That is your own cross to bear.
Have a nice life somehow. Good luck dealing with your needs. So long and goodbye.
FWIW, Karma is a personal thing. Something that you worry about how it affects yourself, more than others. It is a personal guide for the decision making process. Publicly expressing thoughts regarding the affects of Karma on others based upon their own personal actions and decisions is not something done in the true spirit of Karma. imho. ymmv.
The Antonine Plague might have been one of historyâs first âpandemics,â if by that term we mean an explosive disease outbreak on an intercontinental scale. Living through a pandemic not only causes us to see different layers of the past, but can also inspire us to listen to our ancient sources more empathetically. For instance, Covid-19 has made the psychological import of daily death tolls in our ancient texts â such as the 2,000 per day that died in Rome under Commodus â far more real and vivid than ever before. Descriptions of corpses hastily cast into burial pits, the dead deprived of the sacred rituals that were so carefully observed in ordinary times, once read like hyperbole. Long after Covid-19 is over, it is such intimate trauma â of loved ones passing in anguished solitude, of respectful rites denied or deferred â that are likely to linger.
The final death toll of the Antonine Plague is unknown and unknowable, and respectable guesses have ranged from 2 percent to 25 percent of the population. I have ventured a tally somewhere in the realm of seven million to 10 million, in an empire of 70 million souls. One of the hardest paradoxes to reckon with, though, is that the Antonine Plague was as much a symptom of the empireâs success as its sins or stresses. Rome was struck at its apex of power and prosperity â precisely because that power and prosperity had made it ecologically more likely that such a microbiological challenge would emerge and disseminate.
In consequence of the pestilence, the arc of Romeâs growth was abruptly ended. Romeâs margin of military dominance was lost and never completely regained. Yet the Romans were resilient, and we would be fortunate if our country endures for as long as the Romans did after this deadly disruption.
