Covid-19 Pandemic

[Adam Peter]

On 1/31/2021 at 2:07 AM, Simon Tan said:

German led Europe. 

The results are in: Astrazeneca liefert neun Millionen Dosen mehr

[Simon Tan]

The invasion barges are being assembled on the Channel. 

[BansheeOne]

In addition to the promised AstraZeneca increase to 40 million doses for the first quarter starting roll-out one week earlier, BioNTech also plans to scale up deliveries.

Quote

Date 01.02.2021

Coronavirus: BioNTech-Pfizer pledges 75 million more EU vaccines

The EU's vaccine rollout has come under fire for its slow pace amid production shortages. BioNTech-Pfizer now plans on supplying around 2 billion total doses, up from a previous 1.3 billion, by the end of 2021.

BioNtech-Pfizer has promised to deliver up to 75 million more coronavirus vaccine doses to the EU in the second quarter of 2021, the company's head Sierk Poetting said in a statement on Monday.

So far, the EU's vaccine rollout has been hampered by bloc-wide vaccine shortages. Two of the EU's vaccine suppliers, BioNTech-Pfizer and AstraZeneca, have run into production issues.

This has caused vaccination rates in EU countries to be well behind those in other places around the world, including Israel, the United States and Britain.

Increasing capacity

German firm BioNTech and US company Pfizer will increase production with a new facility set to open in the central German city of Marburg in February. It will have the capacity to produce 750 million vaccine doses each year.

It total, BioNTech-Pfizer plans to manufacture around 2 billion doses of the vaccine against COVID-19 by the end of 2021 for the EU. This is up from the initially planned 1.3 billion.

Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, meanwhile, has agreed to supply 9 million additional doses of its vaccine to the European Union during the first quarter, the bloc's executive arm said Sunday.

[...]

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-biontech-pfizer-pledges-75-million-more-eu-vaccines/a-56401762

This "Spiegel" piece on performance of the EU Commission and von der Leyen specifically is a little dated since it was adapted from a German article that went to print before the release of the AstraZeneca contract, and is obviously also tinged by domestic partisanship (particularly funny is that they bring up the G 36 affair when it was the "Spiegel" and co-author Matthias Gebauer specifically who pushed the "this rifle is a disaster, the MoD is letting soldiers down" narrative).

OTOH it's fair enough to mention that the Commission did what smaller member countries in particular, worried about the cost, wanted it do in bringing prices down with lengthy negotiations; after all one basic idea behind the EU is that it will bring the cummulative weight of it members to the table, which would otherwise be easier pushovers. But then you would expect the Commission to negotiate contracts which don't let producers cut back on their promises easily, and the overall criticism is widely shared across the national political board.

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Europe's Vaccine Disaster

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen Seeking to Duck Responsibility

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is trying to get out of the firing line as anger grows over the EU's botched vaccine rollout. It's not the first time in her career that she has sought to evade responsibility.

By Markus Becker, Matthias Gebauer, Christoph Hickmann, Cornelia Schmergal und Christian Teevs

29.01.2021, 18.22 Uhr

When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen talks about politics, there is never a shortage of superlatives and grandiloquence. Until recently, that was also true when she was talking about the extremely sensitive issue of vaccines.

In late November, von der Leyen gushed about the contracts the European Union had signed with various producers, saying it meant that Europeans would have "access to the most promising future vaccines under development" against the coronavirus. When it became clear in December that the first people in the EU would be vaccinated soon after Christmas, she even injected a bit of pathos, tweeting "It's Europe's moment." When the vaccinations then began, she wrote of a "touching moment of unity" and a "European success story."

These days, though, von der Leyen is noticeably quieter – a silence that could have to do with the fact that the erstwhile "success story" might ultimately turn out to be the greatest disaster of her entire political career.

 

Europe is facing a vaccine disaster. Whereas countries like Israel, Britain and the United States. are quickly moving ahead with vaccinations, the EU is reeling from a string of setbacks. First, U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech informed Brussels that it would be delivering far less vaccine than planned in the coming weeks. Then, the company AstraZeneca said it would only be delivering 31 million doses of its vaccine by the end of March instead of the 80 million Europe had been expecting. And again, the Commission was caught completely off guard.

Since then, frustration and anger has been growing across the EU. Europe, one of the most affluent regions in the world, is proving to be unable to quickly protect its citizens from a deadly disease, while other countries are showing how it is done.

 

And the boss is nowhere to be found.

The louder the criticism has grown, the less has been heard from the erstwhile loquacious Commission president. She has, at times, been like the phantom of Brussels. Requests for comment from the press have been systematically blocked by her communications department and she has essentially gone into hiding. This week, though, at the World Economic Forum, she wasn't able to entirely avoid the issue. "Now, the companies must deliver," she said. In other words, the companies are to blame, not us. Not me.

It is, to put it bluntly, a pattern that has occurred frequently throughout her career.

Whenever von der Leyen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), has taken on a new leadership position, she has never just been the new minister. She has always acted as though she would do everything different – better – than her predecessor. It has frequently sounded as though von der Leyen planned to reinvent whatever department or ministry she had just assumed control of, making it more functional and more glamorous at the same time. But by the time it became necessary to dive into the sordid details, she had usually moved on.

In each instance, von der Leyen's departure was perfectly timed. Just as the time had come for evaluations, she had already climbed up to the next rung on her career ladder.

Which is why she is now faced with a real problem. First of all, there isn't really anywhere left to go from her current post in Europe's top position. And second, the pandemic has hit the fast-forward button on political developments, with the consequences of political decisions taking mere weeks to manifest themselves instead of several years. "I am absolutely stunned by how negligent Ursula von der Leyen has been in overseeing the start of vaccinations in recent months," says Lars Klingbeil, general secretary of Germany's Social Democrats (SPD).

[...]

Bazaar Bargaining

Initially, of course, things looked quite good on the vaccine front. Back in summer, nobody was willing to predict that the first vaccine would be approved in the EU as early as December and that vaccinations would begin. Nor that a second vaccine would quickly follow in January. Von der Leyen was also able to claim a significant success when the EU agreed on a joint vaccination strategy in June, despite the fact that the bloc's 27 member states had always defended sovereignty when it came to health care policy. For the Commission president, it represented a gain of both prestige and power. Fleetingly, at least.

The problems began soon thereafter. Negotiations with vaccine producers bogged down, and it wasn't until November that the EU was able to reach a purchase agreement with BioNTech/Pfizer and with Moderna, the manufacturers of the two most successful vaccines thus far introduced. The EU negotiating team, according to people familiar with the talks, was intent on pushing down the price. There was also allegedly an extended disagreement on liability issues, particularly with Pfizer.

While others simply acted with expedience and placed huge orders, the EU – right in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century – decided to bargain like they were at the bazaar. Von der Leyen, of course, didn't lead these negotiations personally. But she is the boss, and carries the political responsibility.

After a year of the pandemic, hundreds of millions of Europeans are tired, frustrated and desperate for an appointment to finally get vaccinated. No other issue is as important at the moment – for the economy, for society and for politics. And the time will come to assign blame for the missteps that have been made. The search for where to place that blame won't start down below among the army of EU bureaucrats. It will start at the top.

Given that truth, von der Leyen's press department has been energetic in its defense of the Commissions actions. After all, the EU has secured rights to 2.3 billion doses of vaccine, they have pointed out, with 760 million of them from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna.

But what use is that when the availability of the vaccine will remain so limited for the foreseeable future? When the producers are unable to deliver what they have agreed to – or can only deliver much later?

And what, actually, is in those contracts, which have thus far remained confidential? Are the deliveries promised by the producers legally binding? Or did the Commission agree to flimsy fine print such that it has no leverage against the producers?

Thus far, only the contract with the German company Curevac has been made public. It says that the producer will make "reasonable best efforts" to deliver the agreed upon number of doses within the negotiated time frame. Pascal Soriot, the head of AstraZeneca, is now claiming the same thing. The Curevac contract also says that the producer must inform purchasers as quickly as possible of possible delays, explain the causes for those delays and present a revised timeline for delivery. That, though, is all.

Should the AstraZeneca contract contain the same language, it would be politically explosive. Tiemo Wölken, a member of European Parliament with Germany's Social Democrats, believes the contract is similar in that regard. "The wording of the delivery requirement for Curevac is supposedly similar," he says. "As such, what Soriot is saying doesn't sound implausible."

That would be a huge embarrassment for von der Leyen, but it would come as welcome news for a man who isn't yet out of the firing line himself: German Health Minister Jens Spahn. At home, Spahn has been the subject of scathing critique for the flubbed beginning of the vaccination campaign. Spahn, who just recently warned the country that "10 difficult weeks" were still to come, is now able to deflect some of the criticism to Brussels – onto the shoulders of fellow CDU member Ursula von der Leyen.

[...]

The Commission president's team precisely registered the criticism coming from Berlin and emphasized that the German government had been kept abreast of the vaccine negotiations, noting that a senior official from Spahn's ministry is on the European Commission's Scientific Steering Committee.

Furthermore, say members of von der Leyen's staff, the criticism from the member-state capitals, Berlin included, is rather hypocritical given the wildly divergent approaches to the vaccines from the bloc's 27 member states. Some of them were particularly concerned about costs, while others didn't care how large the bill would be. Some had faith in the new mRNA technology, while others preferred to rely on more time-tested methods. Given such disagreements, the Commission argues, how could things possibly have gone any faster?

Passing Around the Responsibility

Von der Leyen has received backing from Manfred Weber, head of the European People's Party group in the European Parliament and a member of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to von der Leyen's CDU in Germany. "From today's perspective, the biggest mistake was probably that of making just 2.7 billion euros available for the advance orders," he says. "The member states skimped in the wrong place."

It's the standard political story: Responsibility just gets passed around. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who took over the Defense Ministry in Berlin from von der Leyen, is no doubt an interested bystander. She, too, is facing problems in her ministry that she inherited from the Commission president.

The acquisition of new assault rifles for the German military is threatening to turn into a fiasco for Kramp-Karrenbauer, and last fall, she had to suspend a tendering process for the order of badly needed transport helicopters. Furthermore, the special forces KSK unit has recently turned out to be a hotbed of right-wing extremism. Ursula von der Leyen shares at least some of the responsibilities for all of these problems.

She was the one who decided to phase out the G36 assault rifles that soldiers had grown quite fond of. It was under her leadership that the helicopter contract was tendered. And she was the one who banned symbols associated with Germany's Nazi-era military, the Wehrmacht, from the barracks without realizing that the secretive KSK was full of right-wing extremists.

[...]

Even within von der Leyen's own party, the CDU, uneasiness is growing. Germany has thus far provided 300 million euros for vaccine development, says Mario Voigt, the CDU candidate for governor in Thuringia state elections this fall. "Europe should ensure that companies like Pfizer don't shortchange us."

Essentially, von der Leyen only has one chance left. More vaccine must be made available. And quickly. But this far, AstraZeneca has only said it is prepared "to deliver a bit in February and a bit more in March," says one senior Commission official. "After that, it's darkness."

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/europe-s-vaccine-disaster-commission-president-ursula-von-der-leyen-seeking-to-duck-responsibility-a-1197547d-6219-4438-9d69-b76e64701802

[Ivanhoe]

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-plitidepsin-remdesivir-covid-.html

Quote

A large team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions in the U.S., France and Spain has found that the drug plitidepsin worked better at treating COVID-19 than did remdesivir in a lab setting. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of the drug for treatment of COVID-19 and what they found.

Here's the article in Science;

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/01/22/science.abf4058/tab-pdf

[DB]

Quote

The European Commission has acknowledged it made a mistake when it triggered an emergency provision in the Brexit deal to block Covid-19 vaccine exports to the UK.

“Only the Pope is infallible,” Eric Mamer, the chief spokesman for commission President Ursula von der Leyen, says.

The important thing, he adds, is that the error was “quickly rectified”.

The EU reversed its decision to invoke Article 16 of the Brexit agreement hours after it was announced, following condemnation from London, Dublin and Belfast.

This is from the BBC Coronavirus Ticker, so there isn't a specific link

Anyway, no, "The important thing..." is that the EU is prepared to throw its weight around to abrogate conditions on contracts it agreed to and consequently damages its reputation as a reliable entity with which to do business.

They also appear to have messed up the redaction process for the contract release, and so would be in breach of it completely. In other words, the other side could simply pull out completely.

Again, they're making Boris look good, and one simply couldn't make it up.

[RETAC21]

8 minutes ago, DB said:

This is from the BBC Coronavirus Ticker, so there isn't a specific link

Anyway, no, "The important thing..." is that the EU is prepared to throw its weight around to abrogate conditions on contracts it agreed to and consequently damages its reputation as a reliable entity with which to do business.

They also appear to have messed up the redaction process for the contract release, and so would be in breach of it completely. In other words, the other side could simply pull out completely.

Again, they're making Boris look good, and one simply couldn't make it up.

Operation Seelowe 21 appears to be an imperative any day now....

[DB]

I see no sign of funny moustaches. Until this is true, we're safe enough.

[RETAC21]

1 minute ago, DB said:

I see no sign of funny moustaches. Until this is true, we're safe enough.

it's an improved version

[Tim the Tank Nut]

in 75 years the Military History forum thread on the Covid-Seelowe alternate history is going to be nuts...

[DB]

Philly just being Philly?

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/31/us/philly-commissioner-resigns-testing-vaccine/index.html

I suppose you're all going to say that you get he government you deserve at this point.

It makes all of the accusations of graft over PPE in the UK look minuscule in comparison, so I guess I'll just keep posting stuff like this as more misdirection (see also "The Russian Approach").

[Ivanhoe]

One of the more obvious lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is that our local and state health departments were simply not ready for prime time. My own county just revised its active case count by a factor of two, because they failed to account for the differences between people's legal address and their actual physical address.

As an example of how that happens, consider an single E-5 soldier who has a barracks room but wants to live off-post. Legal address has to be the barracks, but where that soldier eats, sleeps, and poops is off-post. This is pretty common in my AO.

 

[rmgill]

Listening to the Dark Horse Podcast, something occurred to me...what do you think the failure rate of the mRNA vaccines is going to be due to mishandling with regards to the storage temperature? 

[Ivanhoe]

1 hour ago, rmgill said:

Listening to the Dark Horse Podcast, something occurred to me...what do you think the failure rate of the mRNA vaccines is going to be due to mishandling with regards to the storage temperature? 

I expect its going to depend mostly on the "last mile" handling. From manufacturing plant to state health dept is probably done pretty well. However, from state health dept to hospital and/or county health dept and/or pharmacy are TBD.

[rmgill]

I'm picturing staff doing this distribution who have been chosen for intersectional and political reasons and not skill or competence taking everything out of the cryo-freezers because the gloves are cumbersome and letting everything sit out on the counter. 

[Ivanhoe]

I read of a snafu with the rollout in Texas in rural areas. The Pfizer vaccine can only be ordered in lots of 975 doses. The state health department apparently didn't think about the rural regions. No system for returning unused doses or transporting to an adjacent county. So the big urban areas are getting most of the doses of both Pfizer and Moderna.

And apparently the state health department was ignoring and/or rejecting applications from a lot of rural hospitals for the Pfizer vaccine, AIUI saying no unless the hospital provided concrete proof of purchase for an approved freezer.

 

 

[rmgill]

9 hours ago, DB said:

Philly just being Philly?

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/31/us/philly-commissioner-resigns-testing-vaccine/index.html

I suppose you're all going to say that you get he government you deserve at this point.

It makes all of the accusations of graft over PPE in the UK look minuscule in comparison, so I guess I'll just keep posting stuff like this as more misdirection (see also "The Russian Approach").

Just as an aside, Philly was one of the locales where Election shenanigans were deemed to be afoot. 

[Steven P Allen]

Interesting, Ivanhoe.  The last round here locally was a Pfizer lot of 500--no extras, no splitting the order.  This intel comes from a reliable source on the ground setting the operation up.

[Stuart Galbraith]

On 2/1/2021 at 3:22 PM, RETAC21 said:

Operation Seelowe 21 appears to be an imperative any day now....

Glenn will be overjoyed, he can start cranking out Siebel ferries.  

[Stuart Galbraith]

I've just heard that Captain Tom Moore, the centearian that raised a considerable sum for the NHS doing a sponsored walk, has just passed away, after recently being diagnosed with coronavirus.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1392446/captain-tom-moore-dead-captain-tom-dies-NHS-fundraising-nurses-captain-tom-tributes

Sod it.

[RETAC21]

23 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I've just heard that Captain Tom Moore, the centearian that raised a considerable sum for the NHS doing a sponsored walk, has just passed away, after recently being diagnosed with coronavirus.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1392446/captain-tom-moore-dead-captain-tom-dies-NHS-fundraising-nurses-captain-tom-tributes

Sod it.

He had a good run, he was 100!

[JWB]

New diabetes cases linked to covid-19

Researchers don’t understand exactly how the disease might trigger Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, or whether the cases are temporary or permanent. But 14 percent of those with severe covid-19 developed a form of the disorder, one analysis found.

Quote

Although covid-19 often attacks the lungs, it is increasingly associated with a range of problems including blood clots, neurological disorders, and kidney and heart damage. Researchers say new-onset diabetes may soon be added to those complications — both Type 1, in which people cannot make the insulin needed to regulate their blood sugar, and Type 2, in which they make too little insulin or become resistant to their insulin, causing their blood sugar levels to rise. But scientists do not know whether covid-19 might hasten already developing problems or actually cause them — or both.  

As early as January 2020, doctors in Wuhan, China, noticed elevated blood sugar in patients with covid-19. Physicians in Italy, another early hot spot, wondered whether diabetes diagnoses might follow, given the long-observed association between viral infections and the onset of diabetes. That association was seen in past outbreaks of other coronavirus illnesses such as SARS.

A year after the pandemic began, the precise nature and scope of the covid-diabetes link remain a mystery. Many of those who develop diabetes during or after covid-19 have risk factors, such as obesity or a family history of the disease. Elevated blood glucose levels also are common among those taking dexamethasone, a steroid that is a front-line treatment for covid-19. But cases also have occurred in patients with no known risk factors or prior health concerns. And some cases develop months after the body has cleared the virus.  As many as 14.4 percent of people hospitalized with severe covid-19 developed diabetes, according to a global analysis published Nov. 27 in the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism. The international group of researchers sifted through reports of uncontrolled hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar, in more than 3,700 covid-19 patients across eight studies. While those diagnoses might be the result of a long-observed response to severe illness, or to treatment with steroids, the authors wrote, a direct effect from covid-19 “should also be considered.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/02/01/covid-new-onset-diabetes/

[BansheeOne]

On 27.1.2021 at 11:27 AM, BansheeOne said:

Got a call from my physio practice this morning - the therapist I saw on Friday tested positive, and I'm under quarantine until 4 February (1st if tested negative at that date). 

Finally got a negative lab report from the PCR test on Thursday this morning and went back to the office post-lunch after 11.5 days of quarantine. I guess by the letter of the regulation I should have taken another test not before day ten, in which case I might have had quick results and gone back yesterday already before the lab report came in, but since I've been in isolation since Thursday there's no practical way a more current test could have turned out differently ... unless I got infected while being out for the original test, but then the same would apply for the later test, and quarantine would never end. 🤔

I suppose the ten-day requirement makes only sense for multi-person households in common quarantine, where the original suspect case might infect a co-habitant who would test positive only after the stated detection threshold of five days or so later. 

[Ivanhoe]

28 minutes ago, JWB said:

New diabetes cases linked to covid-19

 

At first I thought this might be one of those things where folks with persistent low Ox saturation might have some damage to the pancreas and thus less insulin production. But it sounds like folks are getting the recovery Type 2 diabetes even if they had a mild case.

[Michael Eastes]

The vaccines aren’t available yet for those of us who are decrepit seniors here in the P.R.O.; medical types, first responders, teachers (the schools are still closed), and government functionaries are apparently on the list. We aren’t concerned, as we dealt with a lot of diseases in our careers, and this one doesn’t scare us. The only person I know who has had the virus is my older brother, who at 73 years of age, did fine with it. A few days of feeling cruddy and fatigued, and then full recovery. We’re willing to wait a bit and see how the vaccines effect people. In the meantime, people who ask us if we’re vaccinated yet look at us like we’re insane, or simply defective, when we explain our point of view. 

[DB]

I wonder how many of the diabetes cases were simply undiagnosed pre-existing conditions, maybe "pushed" into being more overt by the virus or the immune response.