Approximately 17,000 people have been given the Oxford AstraZeneca trial vaccine, although half got the placebo. There’s a good chance we’ll know whether the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine is effective before the end of 2020.
There is talk in the Daily Mail today that the government may seek powers to vaccinate people in this country before all the safety stages have gone through. Members of the armed forces, health workers and midwives will be given training to administer the vaccine. The comments overwhelmingly have been "over my dead body!"
I would take it.
Written by
Physalis
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I had a slight reaction to the last flu vaccine I had so I haven't had one for over ten years and I haven't had flu. I wonder if this one is grown in eggs.
I suppose it's a balance between possible side effects and the hope that we and the economy can get back to normal and fewer people will die.
I had an ablation because I didn't want to take chemicals for the rest of my life.
I wouldn’t trust anything the DM prints. The interview on The Life Scientific on Monday with Prof Sarah Gilbert on how the vaccine was developed indicated that we might expect a vaccine to be rolled out, once it had cleared Stage 3 (tested on 10,000 + without doing harm), sometime early 2021. The vaccine is however in production & the government has bought up large quantities.
This vaccine not only has to do no harm, it also has to prove that it is efficacious and we will only know that once this winter is over.
I’ll be first in line as I am in the highest most vulnerable group and will be very glad of it. Vaccines much preferable to the alternatives.
Currently COVID is my immediate neighbour - four children sent home yesterday, one with a high fever - Dad had to drive to S Wales for testing. Keeping my distance!
This phrase "There’s a good chance we’ll know whether the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine is effective before the end of 2020." comes from this website. It makes an interesting read.
Anti-vaxxers think the whole thing is a “deep state” hoax to create mind control and all sorts. Facebook has provided them with a platform to put out their propaganda and to feel comfort that they are not alone with their cynical mind set.
I am not an anti vaxxer but the fact that 17 years since the first SARS virus struck there have been no successful corona virus vaccines is troubling. Most people have never heard of paradoxical immune enhancement. This is when a vaccine creates binding antibodies that result not in immunity to the wild virus but a much worse case of it. This happened with a promising candidate for SARS . The vaccine created a very strong antibody response in the ferrets that were being used to test it. When they were exposed to the virus they all got sick and died. This has happened with other vaccines -for dengue and also back in the 60s with RCT virus. With both of these children have died and the Philippines government is prosecuting the makers of the Dengue vaccine because they knew this could happen and went ahead and gave it to 600 kids anyway. Until it is certain that the covid vaccine does not have this effect I would not have it.
Because the SARS- CoV-1 struck in 2002-3 and it was contained, there was no pressing need for it to be worked on. Now we've got the SARS- CoV-2 creating a worldwide pandemic the rush to get vaccines is much more important. Countries are desperate for a vaccine.
The vaccines have been tested on animals and on thousands of humans and I think, I hope, I'll have one this year.
If you don't want one then it's up to you. I'm sure no-one will be forced to have it. The virus doesn't care if you want it or not!
It normally takes at least 8 years to develop a vaccine. Desperation plus political pressure might lead to shortcuts in safety assessment. I am simply explaining why I am dubious about having it as soon as it is available. The problems with most medical interventions including vaccines do not usually come out in the trials but in post marketing. Look at the rushed out 1976 swine flu vaccine. I think the ferret fiasco was in 2012 so they were still trying for a vaccine against SARS even though it had been contained.
I'd forgotten about the 1976 swine flu, that passed me by but I do remember the 1968 flu being on the news every day. We didn't catch either of them.
1976 was forty four years ago. Things have moved on.
Now we've got virus genome sequencing - and look at computers, I got my first one in 1986, small screen, green letters, DOS, I loved it, thought it was the best toy I'd ever had. By today's standards it hardly did anything. Today my computer can show me pictures of the virus and my great granddaughter on her first day at school
If I volunteer for the vaccine early then I'm not just doing it for me but for my family. And if no-one volunteered for trials then we would never have vaccines.
Surely death is the ultimate mind control - you can’t speak your mind when you are dead! I can’t wait for a vaccine - to many vulnerable people in my life to mess about worrying about poxy conspiracy theories!!
Me too. My son has been working on this vaccine , though I very much doubt it will be rolled out before all of the tests have been completed, which isn't far away. We are blessed in this country to have some of the best scientific minds AND the controls which make sure new vaccines are safe. I wont hesitate to have it.
Is it 60,000 excess deaths? Old folk who should have been enjoying their golden years. That's why I do judge them. I'd be very pleased to find out that I am wrong.
Golden years? I wouldn't mind that if they were golden for all old people. Having spent a week in hospital with four women suffering from dementia and one 'faller' I couldn't see that their lives were golden. It's a bit like the media talking about 'loved ones'. That would be ok if they were all loved. When did they stop saying 'friends and relatives'? That would be nearer the truth.
No, nor am I but I do think that a lot of people are kept alive against their will and have to stick it out to the bitter end. We wouldn't let that happen to animals.
I’ve just read this wonderful little passage from Tolkien’s yet more wonderful novel, The Lord of the Rings:
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
In one of his letters Tolkien wrote “Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' - though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory. (Letter #195)”
C S Lewis, his friend, wrote "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else"
Everyone believes what they believe. I respect that. I can't quite understand why, if the afterlife is going to be so nice, religious people are so against us getting there a little bit quicker.
Yes, Tolkien was a Christian and his friend, CS Lewis, became a convert quite late in life. I think that happened a fair bit in those days. I certainly don't read The Lord of the Rings as a Christian text, however, but as a story to inspire the imagination in a warm and beautifully positive way.
I have already volunteered to be on the vaccine test programme and will be first in line if that is not possible.
With 4 negative indicators, PAF broadly under control following 2 ablations in the space of 18 months, high blood pressure, overweight and over 70, I will continue to self isolate until I am vaccinated and even then I will be cautious if the pandemic is still raging.
At the end of the day it is a question of risk and I don't like my odds without the vaccine compared to the very low risk of having it.
From what I read (the last article I've seen below) I don't know who is telling the truth and so I won't be first in the queue for a vaccine nor first to mix with a lot of people without the vaccine.
I have no idea who Mr Bowles or this group of Belgian doctors are, but it seems to me they have all (apart from whoever wrote the letter itself) electronically "signed" the letter via the Internet, rather like an online petition.
I really would like to believe that what the writer says is the true state of affairs. It wouldn't surprise me if it were, in a way, but it would shock me that so many governments have got this so badly wrong. Nothing would shock me regarding our own inept crowd, but surely all governments cannot be as bad as ours?
The letter does have the ring of truth, and the references given seem to support the statements and claims made, but, for me, I would need something more than a web page with an "open letter", given the ease with which misinformation can be created and spread online these days.
Thanks very much for posting it, though - fascinating.
I came across this video this morning. The first few minutes are about Vitamin D but the rest is about the vaccines. I think he was a lecturer at a medical school and has now retired and making very interesting videos.
I will watch some more of his videos this weekend.
I've been watching Dr John since April, he cuts through the political rhetoric and delivers facts.
That is an old video I think and the trial is back on track.
There comes a point in a trial where it is unethical to continue if the results are so efficacious to save many lives , and we are pretty much at that point. However bulk immunisation doest look like it will be a reality until spring / summer 2021 .
No, it's not an old video, it's dated Sept 16 2020. I think he said that vaccinations had already started in some countries. I'll probably watch it again to get my head around it.
He describes himself as a Nurse Teacher and A&E Nurse. I had already watched his long lecture video on Atrial Fibrillation but didn't recognise him. There is another one posted a week ago on a Vitamin D trial. I'll watch that and probably post it tomorrow.
If other countries are actually vaccinating, are we, in a couple of months, going be saying "give us some of yours" or "we've got one, we'll use it"?
I think that it would be sensible for the government, when the results of our trial come through, to say they'll give it to volunteers and make a big push to vaccinate as many as possible. When they've done that they could take all lockdowns off and tell the anti-vaxxers they're on their own.
I havde watched the one on the vitamin D trial. It was a RCT done at the Reina Sophia University Hospital in Cordoba. What I found really interesting was that the vit D used in the trial was Calcifediol. As Dr John explains this is a vit D analogue which is what the liver produces when cholecalciferol ( what you get in standard D3 supplements and what the body makes from sunshine) is transformed. He explained that it was a shortcut to get any benefit of VitD into the patients faster. Calcifediol is what my doc prescribes for me in drops. I had a spare bottle and gave it to my daughter who lives in London. Both she and her house mate caught covid back in March. The housemate was quite poorly. They both took a loading dose of 10 drops and then the usual daily dose of 3 drops that I take. My daughter said they started to recover very quickly after the loading dose. The trial results at Reina Sophia are amazing - only 2% of the vit D patients had to go to ICU and none died compared with 50% of untreated of whom 2 died. This was a small trial but given the results why is it not all over the news? Why are all patients who present with Covid not being given vit D considering that it is a no harm therapy unlike for instance Remdesivir that can have serious side effects. One reason - there is no money to be made from it and if shown to be the key to preventing serious covid disease and also treating it the need for a vaccine would be far less urgent.
I couldn't see, from what he said, that there would be any benefit in being prescribed Calcifediol. The Covid patients were given it because it gets into the body quickly. I take one 12.5ug tablet a day but I will double that up until I run out of them and then I will buy the 25ug ones. At only £7 for 270 tablets they are cheap enough.
I've been taking vitamin D for years so I don't need any quick boost.
One advantage of Calcifediol is if you have any problems with metabolising vit D . I think I might have because on a dose of 3000iu a day of cholecalciferol I could not keep in the desirable range let alone achieve a good level. Perhaps because I am overweight. My husband could manage a good level on the same dose. But on just 600iu a day of Calcifediol I have a high blood level. On the original prescription of four drops a day ( 800iu) my level was so high the doc told me to drop down to 3 drops. I read on vitamin dwiki that Calcifediol was five times as powerful as cholecalciferol. Without testing blood levels one cannot be sure if the dose is ok there is so much individual variation. 12.5 ug is a very low dose. Only 500iu.
I watched the Dr John video where he talks about Dr Fauci admitting to taking 6000iu a day . This is 10 times the recommended dose of the health authorities in the US. Fauci has been hot on pushing Remdesivir at thousands of dollars a course for Covid but does not seem keen on recommending a cheap as chips substance that umpteen studies have now shown a deficiency of correlates with poor covid outcomes. The hypocrisy of it is breathtaking.
I need to get on top of these ways of measuring Vit D. International units, ug, mg. I thought that one 500 tablet a day was ok but now I'll increase it to Tesco's double strength 1000. I think that will do me because I am not suffering from any of the symptoms of vit d deficiency which are fatigue, bone pain, muscle weakness or depression.
My grandson, the one with something like PoTS was prescribed vit d by the consultant. Will ask if it made a difference.
The bottom line is that you need to test your levels. I was diagnosed with a severe vit D deficiency in 2007. This was despite taking vit D in a calcium supplement ( around 400iu) , cod liver oil ( another 200iu) and eating oily fish most days! I also spent long hours outside gardening in a climate much sunnier than the UK 's though I was not exposing enough skin. The only severe symptom I had was a tendonitis in my left thigh. Luckily my doc thought to test my vit D. I persuaded my friend who was staying at their holiday home to come with me and get tested at our local lab. Her vit D was even worse than mine -absolutely rock bottom at 9ng/l-and she wore far less for gardening than I did and was a lot browner! Older skin just does not make vit D as efficiently. What is more she had no overt symptoms of deficiency. The scientists like Holick who study vit D admit to taking 5000 iu a day in winter. Fauci who is the covid "face" in America has said he is taking 6000 iu . The RDA's in most countries are very low and only really reference the amount needed to prevent rickets and osteomalacia. They do not take into account the amounts needed to make the immune system work properly . Quite a few studies from various places around the world are now showing the correlation between low levels and poor covid outcomes. I would strongly urge you to get tested and then supplement to get your level to 30ng/l or above ( 75nmol/l in uk measurements). You cannot be sure otherwise that you are taking enough. Given that a young skin can make 10,000-15,000iu in 20-30min of midday sun ( only between April and mid Sept in UK) 1000 iu is not a lot.
Fancy that! I thought that, taking 500 iu for as long as I can remember, I might be a bit deficient but not much. I tend to not like wasting money but now you've made me feel edgy about it. What if I need to take more, what if I should take less? I'll do the test and let you know the results.
I've got the app but it wants my password, things are never easy.
I do not think a vit D test is a waste of money if you cannot get tested on the NHS . There are protocols online for how much to take for how long to get you up to a certain level given your starting level but again they are general. Individual absorption depends on many factors including obesity and liver function. The only way to really know if you are taking enough is to retest after adjusting the dose. I would be amazed if you needed to take less!
The problem is that other viruses such as coronaviruses ( the four we had before SARS,MERS and SARS2) and RSV virus can cause flu like illnesses and some of the people deemed to have flu and die from the respiratory complications do not actually have influenza virus but another respiratory virus.
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