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Not really OT
“…the combination of surging demand and workforce disruptions from the pandemic has caused delays of four to 12 weeks for items that used to ship within a week,…”
Idiots! Have they not heard of Amazon?
Just posted this article elsewhere. Biden is supposed to visit the Pfizer plant today. An earlier trip yesterday had been postponed. In the article, there’s this bit of news about production at Pfizer:
Calitri told USA Today for a story published Feb. 7 that the company is on track to cut the amount of time it takes to make a batch of vaccine in half — from 110 days to 60 days as it continues to streamline production.
Lets hope the S African variant does not spread widely. No vaccine so far has shown great promise against it.
A laboratory study suggests that the South African variant of the coronavirus may reduce protective antibodies elicited by the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE vaccine by two-thirds, and it is not clear if the shot will be effective against the mutation, the companies said on Wednesday.
Moderna published a correspondence in NEJM on Wednesday with similar data previously disclosed elsewhere that showed a sixfold drop antibody levels versus the South African variant.
Moderna also said the actual efficacy of its vaccine against the South African variant is yet to be determined.
Management must have banned diagrams in meetings. I’ve always found that helps. Plus having Thor strike dead anyone asking “Does someone have anything to add?” goes a long way.
Such a damn shame Harry S Truman didn’t come up with the Defense Production Act idea a year ago.
He was busy outsourcing his wetwork to Paul Tibbets.
Click thru for the pic, She looks the fool.
That has to be a major concern. If we get the earlier strains under control with vaccinations, the S African variant will become the dominant form and spread rapidly. This is why the use of masks, social distancing, etc. need to be continued indefinitely.
I assume that vaccines are being prepared for that strain but the lag time between production and widespread availability is significant. It will probably require another round of tests and production supplies and facilities are still limited.
Or ebay. Everything’s available on ebay.
I immediately got the mental picture of Little House on the Prairie outfits.
One bit of good news, is I’ve heard the mRna types of vaccine can be modified very quickly compared to other types like inactivated virus. I think it was a CNN segment with Dr. Gupta saying it can be modified and ready to go in as little as two weeks. He implied that it wouldn’t require the same long testing period.
So it might eventually lead to either a second modified booster shot after the first two, or just a change to the seasonal vaccination next year, depending on how quickly any vaccine-resistant strains are spreading.
That asshole always has something to add. Every. Single. Fucking. Meeting.
You are correct about the need to continue mask/distance/hand washing, at least until next year. The exception would be when all members of your vaccinated small group (family) get together. That said, the best way to prevent to COVID variants is to get everyone vaccinated with the current vaccines. Viruses have to replicate to mutate and they replicate poorly (or not at all) in vaccinated people. Even so, all of the current vaccines provide protection against all of the known variants, even SA, just at reduced levels compared to the other known variants. When all of this started, we would have considered any vaccine with >50% efficacy to be a winner. All of the vaccines are >50% against the SA variant; our expectations are a bit high. All of the manufacturers are developing vaccines that include the SA sequence to be used as boosters, but there are likely to be hundreds of US variants that we have just not identified yet. The good news is that no one who has taken any of the available vaccines has died and few have been hospitalized.
And it usually involves tossing a colleague under the bus for something.
Thank you so much, crewman6, for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us. We are so lucky to have you here in the hive. I literally sleep better at night knowing the things that you have shared with us over the past number of months. Thank you. 
Some of the things that do not seem to be known - and definitely need study -
(1.) while mutations like the S African variant are shown to be much more hardy in the transmission process - are they any more deadly if contracted ?
(2.) scientists say that the data “suggests” that the Pfizer & Moderna seem to still have an “encouraging” level of effectiveness in terms of resisting contraction and in terms of muting the severity if the mutated virus is contracted… geez … a bit sketchy on the specifics
(3.) If the ultimate goal is to hit some calculated Herd immunity point - that % of "immunity " that renders the virus unable to jump from one host to another at a pace that exceeds its survival time … what is the level of effectiveness combined with level of population inoculation needed?
again … we continue to be digging out of the huge hole that idiot Trump’s “don’t do population wide testing for prevalence assessment” position has cost us. Trump adamant opposition to scientifically quantifying and characterizing this virus was just monumental criminal stupidity .
This is truly a miracle. We should not forget how amazing this is. Never get complacent about how remarkable this is. Truly.
