nudge

I agree that the exports control is not helpful and that Macron is talking shite as usual, but I can definitely understand the frustration, especially after reading the contract. It might seem hostile, but if the EU are clearly convinced that AZ is NOT making "its best reasonable efforts" to meet the agreed delivery goals, then what options do they have, really? Not many, it seems. Taking legal action is one, but what does it achieve? Getting the vaccine is still the key priority, and any legal battle would last for ages. Should the EU just suck it up then and accept what they believe is a severe contract breach, and let its vaccine rollout scheme take a huge hit because of this? Really, really bad situation for everyone involved.

Well, when you pay over hundreds of millions in advance in order to expedite production, and then shortly before the intended delivery date get informed that you will get less than 40% of what you paid for with no expected increase in the near future, I think it's understandable that everyone's a bit frustrated and angry.

Disagree. 66% overall efficacy for a single dose is not bad at all, but even better is the 85% efficacy against severe cases and 100% efficacy against hospitalisation and death, with protection increasing 50+ days after the shot. This seems like a vaccine that is inexpensive, easy to store, transport and distribute, with a single shot providing protection against severe course of disease. Use it for younger, healthy people while leaving the other, more effective ones to the elderly and people in risk groups. They are also testing a two-dose regiment, which will likely have an increased efficacy too.

You mean a single vaccine for both flu and the coronavirus? No, the two are simply too different. There might be attempts to create a combined jab in the future, most likely an mRNA one, I would imagine. Edit: after a quick look, it appears that at least four companies are indeed hoping to create a combined flu/covid vaccine in the future, with trials potentially starting as early as in 2022!

All viruses mutate, that's natural. Flu viruses mutate extremely fast and there are so many different strains, hence why we have a new flu vaccine pretty much every season. Coronaviruses mutate at a much slower rate and are much more stable as they have an inbuilt genetic proofreading mechanism, so a vaccine is likely to be effective longer and protect against numerous variants (most mutations are completely insignificant and do not matter). There's a good chance that this virus will never go away and will just circulate every winter as other four coronaviruses or flu, but with a high percentage of world's population acquiring immunity through vaccination or infection, it will not be a real threat anymore. That's how the pandemic will end, most likely.

South African variant has many mutations in the spike protein (the main structure that the virus uses to bind to and infect host cells), which may result in it partially escaping neutralising antibodies that your body produces after vaccination (the vaccine uses the genetic sequence of the original virus without the mutations). Good thing about mRNA vaccines is that they are quickly and easily modifiable, hence why genetic sequencing should be a priority.

More than 15,000 participants between 18-84 years of age, 27% of them over the age of 65. No breakdown for each age group yet, but at least the sample size is representative. Similar to the Pfizer vaccine, this one is very effective against the original variant and the UK variant, and less so against South Africa variant - 95.6%, 85.6% and 60% accordingly.

In view of all this, I think India deserves public admiration for providing more than 3 million doses of the vaccine for free to Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives, over 0.5 million doses to Sri Lanka, with more free shipments to Mauritius, Myanmar, Seychelles and Afghanistan set to follow. What a refreshing change of attitudes.

If you look at other vaccines, then yes, efficacy of most vaccines, especially DNA based ones like AZ is much lower in elderly compared to younger people. In fact, flu vaccine for elderly is designed specifically for that age group and contains much higher dose and also usually some adjuvant in order to boost the immune response. You can usually see slight differences of how vaccine works in different age groups by looking at the immunogenetical data, but it does not always reflect the efficacy (real life example with some flu vaccines), so it is hard to draw conclusions. On one hand, given that immunogenicity of AZ vaccine in older people was similar to that in young people could suggest that the efficacy is expected to be similar too, on the other hand, it doesn't guarantee that. So basically what it comes to, we don't really know - there is a risk that it might not work, but it should. In the end, it depends on the approach each country is taking. The UK seems to be willing to take the risk, whereas the EU (or at least Germany, at this point) isn't - I believe the US didn't approve it yet for the same reason, and AZ are conducting new trials just for FDA.

Just to clairify, that's Astrazeneca's data - the German expert panel is simply claiming that there's no proof of efficacy in over 65 age group because of lack of data; they are not claiming the efficacy is 6%!

Handelsblatt still stand by their claim, despite everyone (including German government) denying the 8% figure, so I honestly don't know what to think. You'd think that the biggest business and financial publication in the country would have enough statistically and mathematically literate people to evaluate the numbers before posting something as controversial? But take a look at the table in the twitter post I just copy pasted, the confidence interval of the over 65 group clearly indicates lack of data, but the calculated efficacy based on existing data is 6% - that maybe the source of Handelsblatt claims?

In the interview with AZ's CEO I posted earlier, I really didn't like the way he answered the question about vaccine's efficacy in older age groups. He denied the reports that it's only 8%, but failed to provide any actual number, even if a very preliminary one from the new trials, and just kept on talking about immunogenicity instead. Also, while I agree that the EU placed their order later and thus shouldn't expect same delivery times as the UK, there are still quite a few questions regarding the supply and delivery times that AZ hasn't answered clearly, either. All these recent developments are very worrying indeed. While I think it is highly unlikely that the AZ vaccine is not working in those over 65, the lack of transparency is far from ideal, and the apparent rise of "vaccine nationalism" is the last thing we need right now.

Such a huge loss for the motorsports community, especially junior formula RIP.

This is the reason why the first astronauts who went to the Moon had to spend a month in quarantine after they returned...simply to avoid bringing any extra-terrestrial microorganisms back to Earth. That of course was a bit over-cautious, but in a hypothetic scenario where we make contact with alien life forms, quarantine and other preventative measures would definitely be high priority. It works both ways though, we want to protect other planets from contamination as well. Robotic spacecraft gets sterilised before leaving Earth for this reason. Planetary protection is an important principle in space exploration.

Is there beer on Mars? I DON'T THINK SO!!!

I second @Stan's recommendation for Stellarium, it's the best app for this purpose, in my opinion. I bought a SkyQuest scope a few months ago, but even a pair of decent binoculars is a huge step up, and it's by far more convenient (and much cheaper). Can see soooo many objects with it.

Could be Spica! It's a blueish star (actually two stars, but indistinguishable) Virgo constellation, very bright, and should be seen in the east-southeast at this time of the year.

Current life is very unlikely indeed, but signs of life that has potentially existed there millions of years ago... That would be huge! I hope they find biosignatures in solar system during my lifetime, and if I had to bet, I'd bet on Europa!

A very interesting interview with the CEO of AstraZeneca: https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/01/26/news/interview_pascal_soriot_ceo_astrazeneca_coronavirus_covid_vaccines-284349628/ "Anyway, we didn't commit with the EU, by the way. It's not a commitment we have to Europe: it’s a best effort, we said we are going to make our best effort. The reason why we said that is because Europe at the time wanted to be supplied more or less at the same time as the UK, even though the contract was signed three months later. So we said, “ok, we're going to do our best, we’re going to try, but we cannot commit contractually because we are three months behind UK”. We knew it was a super stretch goal and we know it's a big issue, this pandemic. But our contract is not a contractual commitment."

They race them so hard!

Evil

It's not you're just messing with me

No they don't!