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Tag: COVID-19

16/01/2022

Djokovic goes to Gaol or exile while Hillsong goes Scott-Free.

16 January 2022

Today Novax Djokovic is in Court trying to stop Immigration Minister Alex Hawke deporting him before the Australian Open Tennis starts tomorrow. For those who don’t follow tennis and have been sleeping under a rock, he is the number one seed and if he wins, he will be the first player to win 21 Grand Slam tournaments and as such, the Greatest tennis player Of All Time (GOAT).

Last time he went to Court he won, because the issue was whether the government or Djokovic had done the wrong thing in the visa application process. He won with costs and the government was heavily criticised by the Court (not to mention the rest of the world).

This time is different. Minister Alex Hawke, a young ambitious religious Conservative right-wing numbers man has excluded him in that he is a danger to the population from an infectious point of view, and because he is known to be anti-vaxx and will give publicity to that view. The Court decision is totally stacked the Government’s way because it only has to decide whether the Minister has the power to do this, and the legislation is written so that he would have this power and the meddlesome courts could not interfere. So what is likely to happen is that the government’s position will be upheld, Djokovic will be deported and Australia’s appalling immigration policies will be seen for the arbitrary farce that they are- beyond the rule of law.

The fact that ATAGI (Aust. Technical Advisory Group on Immigration) said that previous infection within the last 6 months could be a reason for vaccination exemption, that Djokovic had had such an infection and that a blind medical panel said that he was safe to come has been ignored. (‘Blind’ in the sense that the panel did not know the name of the person whose file they were reviewing). The point is that he is very unlikely to infect anyone, not to mention the fact that the virus has already escaped and there are few preventive measures in place. Anyone in Australia can fly into Melbourne and go to the tennis with no tests of anything and case numbers of omicron set new records every day. Djokovic has not trumpeted his anti-vaxx views, though one could argue that these are already well known. There is a whole industry telling us what famous people do and think, and that was before the anti-vaxx lobby.

Djokovic is not as popular as the ever-smooth Federer or the rougher battler Nadal, but his public image seems that he is a nice guy, if occasionally misunderstood and pretty ruthless in his quest for the top. Darker mumblings about his unsportsmanlike use of injury rules and mind games have surfaced from a few columnists recently, and one might wonder why. But this is all irrelevant. The government is excluding him ostensibly because he is a risk of infection (absolutely minimal), or that he will stir anti-vaxx sentiment (where the controversy has already done more for the anti-vax cause than his winning of the Australian Open would ever have done).

The real reason is that this government wants to look tough on border control and quarantine, having made a complete mess of the COVID epidemic, with outbreaks due to ‘careless’ border policy, (were there Hillsong groups on the Ruby Princess?), lack of purchase of vaccine, poor management of aged care facilities, and now a ‘let ‘er rip’ policy supposedly to help the economy. Today’s Sun Herald front page announces that ‘71% want Djokovic sent home’. So some hairy-chested populism is the order of the day.

On page 6 of the same Sun Herald (see below) NSW Police decided not to fine Hillsong church after videos were seen of people singing and dancing at a Hunter Valley religious camp. NSW State Health Minister Brad Hazzard is quoted as saying that the singing and dancing ban does not apply to religious groups, though it does apply to recreation facilities, nightclubs etc. Presumably a religious recreation camp is OK, but a non-religious one is a big problem. The fact that the same article notes NSW had 48,768 new cases, 2,576 in hospital, 193 in ICU and 20 deaths yesterday presumably is also irrelevant.

Is it relevant that Scott Morrison and Alex Hawke are members of Hillsong and NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard is in the same Liberal party?

Craig Kelly has called Djokovic a ‘political prisoner’, and for once I agree with him.

If the Court agrees to deport Djokovic because the Minister said so and they cannot appeal it, it will show the world the arbitrariness of Australia’s immigration laws and the government may win a populist victory at the cost of further damage to our international reputation.

As a tennis follower who saw the US Open final, I am of the opinion that Medvedev will beat Djokovic in the tennis if they play, but it looks as though political stupidity has game, set and match.

Hillsong let off as NSW posts 48,768 new cases and 20 deaths
Sally Rawsthorne, Sun Herald, 16 January 2022
NSW has recorded 48,768 new COVID-19 cases and 20 deaths on the third day positive rapid antigen tests are included in the daily infection numbers.Of the new cases, 21,748 were self-reported from at-home tests and 27,020 were from PCR testing.There are 2576 people in hospital with the virus, of whom 193 are in intensive care units. Eleven men and nine women have died from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.Yesterday, police confirmed they had decided not to issue a fine to Hillsong church for a camp in the Hunter Valley, after videos of attendees singing and dancing without masks sparked public outrage.‘‘NSW Police have attended an event in the Newcastle area and spoken with organisers. Following discussions with organisers and after consultation with NSW Health, no infringement will be issued,’’ said police in a statement.‘‘Event organisers are aware of their obligations under the Public Health Orders, and NSW Police will continue to ensure ongoing compliance.’’NSW’s Public Health Order prohibits singing and dancing at music festivals, hospitality venues, nightclubs, entertainment facilities and major recreation facilities.Health Minister Brad Hazzard said while the order does not apply to religious services, it does apply to major recreation facilities, which is defined as a ‘‘building or place used for large-scale sporting or recreation activities that are attended by large numbers of people, whether regularly or periodically’’.‘‘This event is clearly in breach of both the spirit and intent of the order, which is in place to help keep the community safe,’’ he said.Hillsong said the camp differed from music festivals and the organisation was committed to a COVID-safe plan.‘‘Our camps involve primarily outdoor recreational activities including sports and games. We follow strict COVID procedures and adhere to government guidelines,’’ it said.‘‘Outdoor Christian services are held during the camp but these are only a small part of the program.’’It said the video of attendees singing and dancing represented ‘‘only a small part of each service’’.Yesterday, the state government announced its rent regulation would be extended by another two months to March 2022. ‘‘Small business is the engine room of our economy and we need to make sure we support impacted businesses through this latest Omicron wave,’’ NSW Treasurer Matt Kean said. ‘‘With staff shortages and reduced foot traffic, many businesses are struggling at the moment but the ability to negotiate rent will give them a buffer so they can keep the lights on now and recover more quickly.’’Business tenants can access rent relief if they have an annual turnover of less than $5 million. Rent relief has the same eligibility criteria as the discontinued JobSaver and Micro-business Grant programs.It comes as almost 1000 NSW Health workers have resigned or been sacked after refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, placing further pressure on the hospital system that has seen coronavirus patient admissions almost triple within a fortnight. As hospitals and general practices are overwhelmed with surging cases and almost 6000 healthcare workers are isolated across NSW due to COVID-19 exposure, the state’s health department on Friday confirmed 995 of its 170,000-strong workforce had resigned or been stood down after refusing the vaccine.

05/01/2022

COVID Day 4- a non-PCR Day

5 January 2022

I did nothing today- it just took longer than usual.

I felt much the same, a sore throat, not much energy, a bit of a headache and bouts of a dry cough. I did not feel like exercise and I thought that I had better try to get a PCR test and some Rapid Antigen tests in case we needed to prove we were not infectious, or had other people who were concerned contacts.

I researched online where the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) tests were being done. The site I used 2 weeks ago, a 4Cyte drive through test that had taken an hour to do and 3 days and 16 hours to get results from was closed Wed-Friday. It was not clear why this was but the Laverty Pathology group at 60 Waterloo Rd near Macquarie Centre was open till 4pm. I took a novel in case of a long wait and drove there.

As I approached from the google direction cars in the left lane were not moving from the major intersection as far as one could see to the next hill. Many of them had their tail lights on, so I reflected that they were sitting in a line with the engines on. Bad for the environment, but it at least told me that his was the queue. I turned off the engine and started to read. After a while I was wondering why no progress at all was being made, and I thought I might ask if I was under some misapprehension. As I looked up, a pleasant looking woman in her mid-30s got out of the small car ahead, and went to her boot.

I called to her out the window, ‘Is this the PCR test queue?

‘Reckon so’, she said, ‘I’ve brought some snacks to get through it’. She took some biscuits, grapes and a drink and got back in.

We advanced glacially slowly, and I noticed that there was a side road a little way down the queue. Space had been left so cars could go in and out of this side road, but cars had also started to queue there, and of course the two queues merged at the intersection. I had not thought of this until I was nearly at the corner, and I suppose the woman in the car hadn’t either. Some on the side road were shouting abuse or tooting as if we were somehow pushing in to their queue. There were no signs, no guides and nothing online, so it seemed that the only fair thing to do was to take alternate cars. My young friend had recognised this before I had and moved her car across the middle of the side road, so that cars exiting or entering could go in front or behind her, but she could be sure that the side road queued cards did not just push in. There was a cacophony of abuse from the side street.

The queue moved forward a few cars, so I followed her closely, letting one car in as seemed fair. A large 4WD with a man screaming obscenities at me tried to push in, but I kept him out. I wondered if he would get out and make trouble but he did not. The passenger in the car I had let ahead of me had got out and was remonstrating with the woman who had been in front of me. It was tense. I was very glad we were not in America with some people having guns.

We continued our glacial advance, then a car coming in the other direction stopped. The driver stuck his head our and was shouting something to those in the queue ahead of me. I could not hear him, but he did not seem abusive, so as he passed I called to him to ask what he had said. He said, ‘They have closed early; I was second in the queue and they told me to go away’. It seemed likely that he was right, but most people had waited so long that they were not willing to drive off, so we moved quite slowly till everyone had driven past the ‘Closed’ sign that had appeared in the driveway. It was 2pm. The testing site was advertised to be open till 4.

No test and a couple of hours wasted. I have COVID. It is not recorded in the system. It seems that I will recover. Will I waste another few hours tomorrow? And if I do will I have PCR results anyway? I am scheduled to see my patients again 9 days after the onset of symptoms- presumably I will be non-infectious. Luckily I got some RAT kits.

It is not hard to see where anger and frustration comes in all of this.

‘Personal responsibility’ has a very Darwinian edge.

Thank God I am not very sick.

12/11/2021

Mental Health and Physical Health

11 November 2021

The Health system has a major divide that is not often spoken about- the divide between mental health and physical health.

Physical health tries to be a science and likes to think that its diagnoses and treatments are based on sound experimental evidence. If someone is sick and there are not enough facilities there is a fair effort from the medical profession and relatives to get more resources and they are mostly successful. There is a highly respected system and career structure.

Mental health has similar endeavours, but has less of a scientific base for its diagnoses and treatments. There has been a lot of work on neurotransmitters associated with depression and drugs that supposedly increase the good ones, but no single test is associated with a diagnosis, and diseases are defined. It gives it a lingering stigma of imprecision.

The workforces in mental and physical health have relatively little crossover, even isolated within the same hospital. When I last worked in the health system 9 years ago in a hospital that had both an active ED and a mental health facility, patients were triaged as physical or mental, different teams saw them, and neither team wanted much to do with the other stream’s patients. There was a shared waiting room, but different personnel, assessment areas, practices and wards. Getting one of the other team to assess someone was an afterthought, or only when the pathology was fairly gross.

When I was in tobacco control, there was a lot of reluctance to try to get mental health patients to stop smoking as ‘they needed it’, which was another way of saying that to add the nicotine withdrawal to their generally stressed situation was merely making trouble. But the public health statisticians said that people with mental health problems had a lot of physical problems and died about 14 years earlier (AIHW). So glossing over the physical health of mental health patients is not without consequence.

It was interesting to note recently that a COVID-19 infection in a mental health inpatient went undiagnosed for 4 days, and drew attention to the fact that mental health patients had a poor vaccination rate also.

www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/hospital-patient-s-covid-19-infection-undetected-for-four-days-20211105-p596aw.html

10/07/2021

Is There a Role for the Military in Vaccination?

10 July 2021

I felt that something was wrong when a Soldier started advising me about vaccinations.

Here is a good summary from Crikey of what seems to be happening.

www.crikey.com.au/2021/07/07/administration-with-authority-how-putting-the-vaccine-rollout-in-military-hands-is-corrosive-for-the-country/?utm_campaign=Weekender&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wkndr=RFdETTg0am9ucG5qc2dpcVpTeTU2QT09&success=krsmvj

09/07/2021

COVID19 Vaccines Reduce Transmission

9 July 2021

www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduc?fbclid=IwAR0HwSRf56I6awyVZfsN1O-CbCjeOHJWZk9PwxbgJE_L2V9TwRJPxalSLu8

09/04/2021

Vaccines and Probabilities

April 9 2021

Many years ago as I tried to tell sceptical people that smoking killed people, the research was all about the probability of smokers getting diseases more often than non-smokers. People would often reply, ‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’ as if this was some sort of frightfully clever response that neutralised any sensible discussion.

Statistics have been used by researchers for years and are the basis of the experimental method to get towards scientific truth. Things are rarely ‘proved’ in science, they are just rendered more and more likely, so that the probability of their not being true becomes infinitesimally small.

Where there are number of variables the statistics become ever more complicated and the proofs more arguable. Some of us get a bit lost as the complexity rises, and try to retreat to ‘common sense’, with is another way of saying what is most probable based on facts we are already sure of.

The Astra-Zeneca vaccine has been pushed in Australia, and there is a world shortage of vaccines, despite Prime Minister Morrison running around with an open chequebook for a long time and boasting that we were at the front of the queue for was it 4 different ones ‘in development’?

The loss of the Uni of Qld. vaccine because it gave a false positive in the HIV/Aids test was a bad blow, given that it was ‘ours’ and the vaccine against cervical cancer had been so successful.

As more and more countries expressed reservations about the A-Z vaccine, it was becoming harder and harder to stick to the line that they were panicking and there was nothing in the stories about blood clotting in dangerous body locations.

Now A-Z is not recommended for the under 50 age group, which is most of the country. Presumably this means that because under-50s are less likely to die of COVID19 even if they get it, the risk of dying from a clot becomes more significant. Obviously in Australia, if we can keep COVID isolated forever, we will not need a vaccine at all unless we want to venture overseas. So we are looking at the probability of the virus escaping, and the probability of other vaccines being available as well as the chance of dying at whatever age we are with whatever existing medical problems we may have, versus the chance of having a bad reaction to the vaccine.

I want to get vaccinated so I can go on an overseas holiday at last, but the A-Z vaccine may be less effective against new and dastardly strains, and if I take that risk will I be stuck in a hotel in Mongolia unable to fly home because the government has changed its policy on my vaccination status or the absolute numbers who can be quarantined?

It is very hard to answer all these questions for anyone, and when older patients who have clotting problems ask for advice, it is very hard to give them an answer. Doctors will have to spend a lot of time on this. Our practice is not vaccinating at all, the red tape scared us off, despite the fact that we had bought a new vaccine frig and have been vaccinating people for 40 years. Call me a coward if you will. But for myself, I do have an appointment to have the A-Z vaccine next week.

Here is the SMH article:

AstraZeneca blood clot cases force major vaccine shake-up; Pfizer now preferred for under-50s

By Rachel Clun

April 9, 2021

Pfizer is now the preferred vaccine for people aged under 50 and the timing of Australia’s rollout is in doubt after medical experts expressed concerns about rare blood clots potentially linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine – the mainstay of the country’s existing COVID-19 strategy.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday night the government will review Australia’s vaccine portfolio and accept medical advice that will preference the Pfizer vaccine over AstraZeneca’s in adults aged less than 50 years old who have not already received a first dose of AstraZeneca, putting plans to vaccinate the entire population by October in doubt.

Australia’s decision follows changes by European medical regulators after a review of data confirmed a rare blood clotting condition seen in a small number of patients was linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Mr Morrison said the new advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation was not a prohibition on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in people aged under 50.

“This is not a directive. This is not an instruction,” he said, noting they were taking “an abundance of caution” with the new advice. He said the impact of this decision on the timeline of the rollout was uncertain.

“Tomorrow, and over the weekend, there will be a recalibration of how the program will need to be adjusted to take into account decisions the government’s taken tonight to accept those recommendations from ATAGI,” he said on Thursday evening.

Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly said the rare but serious blood clot disorder was discussed in the meeting, taking into account what was decided overseas and looking at what that would look like in Australia.

“This is a rare event,” he said. “But it is serious and can cause an up to 25 per cent death rate when it occurs.”

For those over 50, Health Department secretary Professor Brendan Murphy said AstraZeneca was strongly recommended.

“It is a vaccine that is very, very effective,” he said.

ATAGI spent hours on Thursday considering the medical evidence. It then issued new advice on the AstraZeneca vaccine, which it provided to the government just after 7pm.

The medical experts made three recommendations, including that AstraZeneca was preferred in adults over 50, after a lengthy meeting. They also recommended adults under the age of 50 should only be given AstraZeneca where the benefits clearly outweighed the risks. Third, it recommended that adults under 50 who had already received their first doses without experiencing serious side effects could safely be given their second dose.

Professor Kelly stressed the data on the rare clotting side effect, venous thromboembolism, was still only preliminary.

Britain’s vaccine advisory committee says adults under 30 should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine when possible, due to a very rare side effect of blood clots in the brain.

“There are very few cases of this extremely rare event that have happened anywhere in the world, but the ones we’ve seen, there’s definitely a tendency for the younger people [to develop it],” he said.

The UK regulator has decided to offer an alternative vaccine for those aged under 30.

Australia has purchased 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and has been relying on the AstraZeneca vaccine as the workhorse of the rollout. The country is expecting its first deliveries of the Novavax vaccine, pending regulatory approval, some time in the fourth quarter of the year.

Late on Thursday, Australian pharma giant CSL said “it remains committed to meeting its contracted arrangements with the Australian government and AstraZeneca for locally produced AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.”

AstraZeneca Australia added that it respected the decision outlined by the government.

“Regulatory agencies have reaffirmed the vaccine offers a high-level of protection against all severities of COVID-19 and that these benefits continue to far outweigh the risks.” a spokeswoman for the company said.

Earlier, the Prime Minister said the risk of severe side effects with the AstraZeneca vaccine is much lower than with common drugs including paracetamol and the oral contraceptive pill.

Mr Morrison said it was important to know the risk of developing venous thromboembolism was much lower following the AstraZeneca vaccine than the risk of death from COVID-19.

“Let’s note that in the UK, the advice is that some 6000 people’s lives have already been saved by this very vaccine. So we need to consider the positive benefits,” he said.

From UK data, the risk of venous thromboembolism following the vaccine was about one to five per million people.

“To put that in some sort of perspective, the combined oral contraceptive pill, that can include adverse side effects of venous thromboembolism – that’s seven to 10 per 10,000,” Mr Morrison said.

The advice has been shared with the expert medical panel, the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, which comprises all state and territory chief health officers and led by federal Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly.

The matter will also be discussed in national cabinet on Friday and in meetings with state and territory health ministers, who were due to meet on Thursday night to discuss the revised advice and its implementation.

On Wednesday 75,880 doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines were administered across the country, Scott Morrison said, taking the national total to 996,214 doses administered so far during the rollout.

The states and territories have administered 509,802 doses. Through the federal government, 486,343 doses have been administered, including more than 125,260 through aged care.

03/02/2021

Are Google Algorithms Reinforcing Anti-Science positions? 3 Feb. 2021

As the anti-science movement seems to gain strength and undermines the campaign for COVID vaccination, there has been increased interest in the origin, strength and tactics of this.

It is blamed on the Russians, who presumably are trying to weaken and divide the West, and on civil libertarians, who want to politicise medical common sense. But when it helped by people like Trump in the White House and Kelly in Australia the conspiracy theories are put into perspective, as the anti-science views are given legitimacy.

But in the fuss about Google withdrawing from Australia, or not covering Australian politics, I wondered what effect this might have and tried a different search engine, duckduckgo. The difference is that google gives me a personalised feed, but duckduckgo gives everyone the same information for the same key words.

Search engines at a basic level give a ‘top pops’ of popularity of a topic in that those with the greatest number of clicks go to the top. This may be fine if you are looking for a movie review, but if you want older material it will be a long way down. Scientific articles are a lot further down than mainstream ones, and the algorithm is influenced by the viewer’s previous viewing habits. If a person has viewed a lot of conspiracy articles, it is presumably then likely that these are more likely to come up again and reinforce the existing views of the viewer. If the feed is continually biased to a point of view, the viewer is likely to come into contact with more of this view and people who share t, so that they are eventually in a bubble or subculture of people with this belief, and are unaware that their reality has been changed.

As an example my son went to school with a boy in NZ whose father controlled feral pests for a living, which meant shooting rabbits, ferrets, deer, pigs, cats and possums which are predators on various farms in NZ. He kept in touch with his friend and they played video games online. But his friend went shooting quite a lot with his father, joined a gun club and started to receive the literature of this subculture. His previously non-political, mainstream views are now hugely influenced by the American gun lobby and rabidly right wing. This is quite unusual in rural NZ. My son commented, ‘In the end, you think what you get in your feed’.

The algorithms exist to make you happy and to keep you clicking in order to get you to buy things. But the result might be quite different- a creation of a bubble environment where everyone’s opinion tends to be magnified, sometimes going in a bad direction.

How this can be controlled is a question- if we all got the same feeds, would the sensible people make sensible articles come up first? Presumably; if most people were well educated. We had better go there also. Which Big Brother will tell google how to do its algorithms?

(The longer version of this attached article is available via a link at its end).

https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/peter-hotez-anti-science-movement-killing-hundreds-of-thousands_n_6014b39ac5b622df90f382ee?ri18n=true&fbclid=IwAR19_qqWuNe9t8ySSTdNU5OjL6jKkxPCT3cDbAP0EhAKXoXrLPod_xVfdKM

30/12/2020

Privatisation of Research will Kill Millions due to Vaccine Non-Availability 30/12/20

The COVID vaccines were an international race. Many countries and companies competed. The Uni of Queensland one fell over because it made the AIDS test a false positive. There are now 5 principal ones in the media; Pfizer from Germany, Astra-Zeneca/Oxford from the UK, Moderna from the USA, Sputnik 5 from Russia, and Sinovac from China. Over here we ignore the two from Russia and China, for some reason. Do we not trust them, are we just racist, or do we want to support Big Pharma in ‘The West’?

I recently met with some medical sceptics, who said that there is no public proof that the vaccine works, i.e. published papers. I said that it was in the media that there had been a 43,000 person trial with not very many side effects. They conceded that this was correct, but pointed out that you could inject water into 43,000 people with few side effects, and that it was a question of how many of the 43,000 had been exposed to the virus, compared to a group of 43,000 in the same environment who had not been vaccinated. And you could not ask a volunteer who had just had the vaccine to cuddle up to a COVID case- that would be foolhardy. Their key point was that all the data was still in the drug companies’ hands and not publicly available. Presumably the regulatory authorities have it, and hopefully they are still being rigorous under the pressure. We have to assume the vaccines work as we need to open up the world economy.

Our government promised a fortune to these companies before they even had a product to sell, and all the bluster about having an equal world in terms of vaccine access does not seem to have dollars attached. At present there is not enough vaccine to go around, but it still matters where you start. Logically, vaccinating Australians where there is very little infection would likely save fewer lives than vaccinating people where the virus is rampant.

I have told the story before about Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine with public funds and did not patent it so that the maximum amount of vaccine could be distributed to rid the world of polio. This was in sharp contrast to Glaxo, the drug company, which found that an old unpatented drug worked against AIDS, patented it and then insisted that the price of it be at least $US2 a day, although an Indian company said that they could produce it for 7 cents. The result was several million extra AIDS cases in Africa.

Sadly the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil was a similar story. HPV was found to be the cause of cervical cancer. The vaccine was developed at Uni of Queensland by Prof Ian Frazer, and then marketed by CSL and Merck. Its roll out was considerably delayed by its cost, despite the fact that the Uni of Qld declined to insist on royalties from sales in developing countries. It is still $73 a shot in Australia (2 needed, 3 recommended), though our government makes it free to Australian schoolchildren.

This article says that the Coronavirus vaccines will worsen inequalities. This is true, because not only will poorer countries not be able to afford the vaccine, they will also have more people die and have higher health costs as they will have to treat the cases. It will also have a bigger impact on their economies. The fine rhetoric about sharing world knowledge will certainly be tested. It might be noted that the Chinese released the draft genome of the Coronavirus to the world in January 2020 (Sciencemag.org) in the interest of stopping the outbreak, which was a credit to China and gives credence to their vaccine. On the other hand, I seem to recall that Pfizer declined to be involved in information sharing, but have been unable to find the reference for this.

Pfizer did not get public funding but their development partner, BioNTech, did. The question is how much profit will there be in all this, and how much will the price stop poorer countries getting the vaccine.

The fact that governments no longer fund the research directly and go into ‘private-public partnerships’ gives rise to the feeling that governments put in the funds but the private partners both determine the priorities in research with a bias towards research that can make a profit and then make that profit. The governments then either largely fund the profit, or leave their populations unable to benefit from the research that they as taxpayers funded.

I have two relevant articles on this, one below, and one coming shortly.

www.internationalhealthpolicies.org/featured-article/why-does-pfizer-deny-the-public-investment-in-its-covid-19-vaccine/

https://amp.theage.com.au/business/the-economy/a-pitiful-response-global-economic-inequality-a-side-effect-of-vaccines-development-20201226-p56q99.html

13/12/2020

Cooperation on COVID Vaccines? 13/12/20

We hear a lot about 3 COVID vaccines; the Pfizer one being rolled out in the UK last week and in the US from tomorrow, the Oxford Astra-Zeneca one that is imminent, cheaper and has less problems with refrigeration, and the Moderna one, which is US based and does not yet seem to have a launch date.

There are two other vaccines in the news, the Russian Sputnik V one being rolled out there and in Eastern Europe, and the Chinese Sinopharm one that is going into Indonesia, India and elsewhere. But it seems that no one is considering bringing these two into the Western world. We might ask, ‘Why not?’

Is it racist? Do we think their scientists are no good and would fake the results? Are we simply in the thrall of Western pharmaceutical companies with captive regulators? Perish the thought, would their vaccines be cheaper? China has 1.3 billion people to protect and have goes to a lot of trouble to do so. They had scientists working with the US until the fuss started. They had a head start in the vaccine race. If the vaccine did not work they would have wasted a lot of time and effort vaccinating their own country and would suffer a huge loss of face. It seems unlikely that their vaccine does not work. So again, why no evaluation here? If Australia asked the Chinese to give us the data on their vaccine to evaluate it for licence here, it would be a nice peace gesture in the needless spat that was created when Morrison accused the Chinese of hiding the origins of the COVID epidemic.

It seems that some scientists in Britain and Russia have suggested cooperation between the Oxford and the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. This story is from RT- Russia Today. Will this actually happen?

www.rt.com/russia/509340-astrazeneca-sputnikv-vaccine-collaboration/

11/12/2020

COVID19 Vaccine Roll Out 11/12/20

People are asking me if they should get vaccinated. It shows how trust in our institutions has been eroded. A few years ago no one would have questioned it.

The side effects are far less than the death rates from COVID, particularly in older age groups or those with other health conditions. COVID also seems to have a considerable amount of long-term after-effects in a significant percentage of people; note the difference between the infection rate and the recovered rate in the statistics. (Of course some may have just been lost to follow-up).

Children seem to have few symptoms, but if they are not infected and grow older without immunity, it would be ironic if they are then badly affected later. Mumps is like that- relatively trivial in youth, but can cause pancreatitis, encephalitis and sterility later. Years ago in the pre-vaccination days, if a child had chicken pox or measles, the mothers would all bring their children to be deliberately infected at a ‘Pox Party’, though these are now discouraged. This sort of immunity may well be spreading and giving herd immunity in countries that have COVID now endemic, but it would be unwise to do it here as it would spread it to more vulnerable demographics.

Chicken pox can cause herpes zoster (shingles) in older folk, which is very painful, and now has a vaccine (Zostavax) that is very expensive but free after age 70.

This article is about the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine, which is not the Pfizer one that is currently being rolled out in the UK. It seems that the Oxford one is the first to publish the results of a Phase 3 trial, and though a lot of people have been vaccinated, not many people have been infected, which means that the numbers on which the conclusions are drawn are still not large. There is an embedded link in the article that gives a good summary of the trial procedures. It seems that the Oxford vaccine will have the advantages that it is easier to store, and transport and is cheaper. Presumably as this article is now published, its roll out is imminent also.

From an Australian perspective, there is now a huge rollout of the Pfizer vaccine in the UK, so we will know exactly how well it works by the time it gets here.

It is sad that the Qld Uni vaccine has been abandoned as it gives a false positive for the HIV/Aids Antibody test. Presumably it would have worked, and perhaps an alternative HIV/Aids test might have distinguished the two apart.

https://theconversation.com/the-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-is-the-first-to-publish-peer-reviewed-efficacy-results-heres-what-they-tell-us-and-what-they-dont-151755?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20December%2011%202020%20-%201808017569&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20December%2011%202020%20-%201808017569+CID_01f3cb2f6f072670ce3f7d184deeafcf&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=The%20OxfordAstraZeneca%20vaccine%20is%20the%20first%20to%20publish%20peer-reviewed%20efficacy%20results%20Heres%20what%20they%20tell%20us%20%20and%20what%20they%20dont