| crissindahouse said: USA will reach 150k deaths today sadly. When you think about how USA has a much lower percentage of people above 70 compared to many European countries it looks even worse. Just imagine USA would have like twice as many above 70. |
More sadly plenty will say, you predicted 2 million deaths, see it's just the flu. (Except already over twice as many deaths as a bad flu season in a quarter of the time with all the measures that have been taken)
The silver lining, big test bed for vaccines
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/experimental-coronavirus-vaccine-put-to-final-test-in-thousands-of-u-s-volunteers-1.5040424
The world's biggest COVID-19 vaccine study got underway Monday with the first of 30,000 planned volunteers helping to test shots created by the U.S. government -- one of several candidates in the final stretch of the global vaccine race.
The needed proof: Volunteers won't know if they're getting the real shot or a dummy version. After two doses, scientists will closely track which group experiences more infections as they go about their daily routines, especially in areas where the virus still is spreading unchecked. "Unfortunately for the United States of America, we have plenty of infections right now" to get that answer, NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci recently told The Associated Press.
Every month through fall, the government-funded COVID-19 Prevention Network will roll out a new study of a leading candidate -- each one with 30,000 newly recruited volunteers.
Next up in August, the final study of the Oxford shot begins, followed by plans to test a candidate from Johnson & Johnson in September and Novavax in October -- if all goes according to schedule. Pfizer Inc. plans its own 30,000-person study this summer.
It will still take until the end of the year at least before anything becomes available
If everything goes right with the final studies, it still will take months for the first data to trickle in from the Moderna test, followed by the Oxford one. Governments around the world are trying to stockpile millions of doses of those leading candidates so if and when regulators approve one or more vaccines, immunizations can begin immediately. But the first available doses will be rationed, presumably reserved for people at highest risk from the virus.
"We're optimistic, cautiously optimistic" that the vaccine will work and that "toward the end of the year" there will be data to prove it, Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Massachusetts-based Moderna, told a House subcommittee last week.
Oxford vaccine is being tested in Brazil
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/hopes-for-a-covid-19-vaccine-may-run-in-these-front-line-workers-veins-1.5040217
Across the city, frontline medics like her have enrolled in a Phase 3 test of the vaccine's efficacy as they battle the pandemic, which has infected more than 2 million Brazilians. And it isn't just Oxford testing its vaccine in this vast human petri dish. Chinese firm Sinovac began trials last week in Sao Paulo, and US pharma giant Pfizer plans to do so soon, bringing a race among powers to prove their vaccine works first.
Of course Trump and Bolsonaro aren't helping
Sinovac's trial began last week with now a handful of recipients in the São Paulo healthcare system. Yet an unexpected side effect has emerged -- not of the vaccine but the geopolitical race for it. A small fringe of angry Brazilians have railed on social media against the "China vaccine." They're echoing the earlier rhetoric, critics say, of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and the Trump administration about the "Chinese virus."
"God help me not to take the vaccine made by those who made the virus! #nothanks #chinesevaccineNO" reads one Twitter user's post in Portuguese about the Sinovac vaccine. "My friends, do not allow yourself to be GUINEA PIG of CHINESE DICTATORSHIP and Doria (expletive)," reads another, referring to Sao Paulo governor Joao Doria, with the same #chinesevaccineNO hashtag.
As a result, the Sinovac project has recommended that their contributors hide their identities. "This is the number one concern," said leading epidemiologist and head of the Sinovac trial, Dr Esper Kallas. "Some people may react oddly in these days to a volunteer who participated in a vaccine that was conceptualized in a Chinese company."
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