Coronavirus updates December 2020...please add yours.

[AprilBaby]

I forgot to cancel mine and decided to go since we may be losing insurance in the coming months. The lobby was good. Just me and the two ladies at the desk, temperature checked, etc. Then I got brought back... All of the exam areas are open to each other (3/4 height wall with one entire open side) and there were three other patients at the same time I was there. They had me swish peroxide mouth wash prior to cleaning. I was uncomfortable during and after as there were too many people all sharing the same office space. Despite air cleaners, I did not feel it was enough. Had it not been for their lunch break closing the office, there would likely have been another three patients in during the time it took to exam & clean.

It was uncomfortable enough I cancelled DH's appointment even though it means we will likely have to reschedule without insurance.

Not good! Don’t go back there. They can only have 1 person every other op. No one in waiting room. Very bad protocol.

 

[xjsbellamias13]

Thanks for everyones input re dentist! It was helpful . I trust my dentist, but don't have any special issues so I think I'll pass on this cleaning.

 

[kgizo]

Regarding dental cleaning: I don’t have any family members in dentistry but do in oncology. Oral cancers are often first identified during a dental exam so if this is a risk factor for you please consider that when weighing your options. Sadly, covid is impacting many preventative care procedures.

 

[Calliecake]

Not good! Don’t go back there. They can only have 1 person every other op. No one in waiting room. Very bad protocol.

Thank you for weighing in on this @AprilBaby. It’s means a lot because you work in this field.

 

[Austina]

COVID-19 vaccine: Historic moment first UK patient receives coronavirus Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus jab outside clinical trial — Sky News

The fight against COVID-19 has taken a historic leap forward - and the very first person to get the Pfizer/BioNTech jab outside a clinical trial was 90-year-old Margaret Keenan.

apple.news

 

[missy]

COVID-19 vaccine: Historic moment first UK patient receives coronavirus Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus jab outside clinical trial — Sky News

The fight against COVID-19 has taken a historic leap forward - and the very first person to get the Pfizer/BioNTech jab outside a clinical trial was 90-year-old Margaret Keenan.

apple.news

So exciting @Austina. Praying this is successful and ultimately ends the pandemic. I hope everyone can get vaccinated. There is talk of a vaccine shortage in the USA and I wonder how that will affect the pandemic.

Trump Administration Passed on Chance to Secure More of Pfizer Vaccine (Published 2020)

The pharmaceutical company offered the government a chance to lock in additional supplies before its vaccine was proved effective in clinical trials.

www.nytimes.com

"
By Sharon LaFraniere, Katie Thomas and Noah Weiland

• Dec. 7, 2020

WASHINGTON — Before Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine was proved highly successful in clinical trials last month, the company offered the Trump administration the chance to lock in supplies beyond the 100 million doses the pharmaceutical maker agreed to sell the government as part of a $1.95 billion deal over the summer.
But the administration, according to people familiar with the talks, never made the deal, a choice that now raises questions about whether the United States allowed other countries to take its place in line.
While two vaccines, including Pfizer’s, have proved to be highly effective against Covid-19, and a third also appears at least moderately effective, supplies are shaping up to be scarce in the coming months as infections, hospitalizations and deaths surge to new highs. And while Pfizer is now negotiating with the administration to provide more of its vaccine, people familiar with the talks say the company cannot guarantee that it will be able to deliver more than the initial 100 million doses — enough to inoculate 50 million people since its vaccine requires two shots — before perhaps next June.
After it signed its federal contract in late July, Pfizer went on to seal deals with other governments, including the European Union, which last month finalized an agreement to acquire 200 million doses from Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech. On Tuesday, Britain will begin inoculating its population with the vaccine.
President Trump has hailed the development of the vaccine as a victory for his administration, even though Pfizer, unlike the developer of the other most promising vaccine, Moderna, took no upfront money from the government’s Operation Warp Speed development program.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump is holding a White House event to promote the program’s role and plans to issue an executive order that applies his “America First” philosophy to the pandemic by proclaiming that other nations will not get the U.S. supplies of its vaccine until Americans have been inoculated.
The executive order by itself appears to have no real teeth and does not expand the U.S. supply of doses, according to a description of the order on Monday by senior administration officials. But it provides Mr. Trump with a talking point to rebut any criticism about the limited initial supply of the vaccine.
The order is being issued “to ensure that the United States government prioritizes getting the vaccine to American citizens before sending it to other nations,” according to a draft statement. The decision by the White House to issue the executive order was reported by Fox News.
Since the beginning of the vaccine development efforts early this year, some experts have been concerned that nationalism could complicate efforts to distribute the vaccine equitably around the world. Until now the United States has declined to participate in international efforts to supply low-income countries with vaccines.
Asked if the Trump administration had missed a crucial chance to snap up more doses for Americans, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said, “We are confident that we will have 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine as agreed to in our contract, and beyond that, we have five other vaccine candidates, including 100 million doses on the way from Moderna.”
The federal contract signed in July called for Pfizer to deliver 100 million doses by March at a cost of $19.50 a dose — if its vaccine worked. It gave the government the option to request 100 million to 500 million additional doses. It was one of six contracts that the Trump administration signed with vaccine makers in a strategy intended to hedge its bets and maximize the chances of success.
Accounts differ over the timing of the discussions between Pfizer and federal officials about locking in extra doses. Several people said that during late summer or early fall, Pfizer officials repeatedly warned the Trump administration that demand could vastly outstrip supply and urged it to pre-order more doses, but were turned down.
One senior administration official, who spoke to reporters on Monday on the condition of anonymity, said that any company offering hundreds of millions of doses before it had proof its vaccine worked “was just not going to get the government’s money.”
Another person familiar with the negotiations said talks about possible additional doses began in early October. Michael Pratt, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, declined to comment on the discussions, but said that “an important part of any negotiation is having established timelines for delivery and production amounts.”
In a statement, Pfizer, an American company with headquarters in New York, said that “any additional doses beyond the 100 million are subject to a separate and mutually acceptable agreement,” and that “the company is not able to comment on any confidential discussions that may be taking place with the U.S. government.”
So far, only Pfizer has won emergency approval from a Western government. British regulators authorized it less than a week ago, after late-stage clinical trial results showed the vaccine was about 95 percent effective. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to follow suit in the United States as early as this weekend.
The agency may also soon approve another vaccine developed by Moderna, a small firm based in Cambridge, Mass. But doses supplied by Pfizer and Moderna will initially be extremely scarce — enough to vaccinate about 22.5 million people before the end of the year — and federal officials have said vaccines will not be widely available to Americans until well into next year, even as the daily death toll continues to climb with more than 280,000 lives lost to date.
Originally, the White House cast Tuesday’s vaccine event as a kind of a victory lap for Mr. Trump. The president has repeatedly noted that his administration threw the might of the federal government behind vaccine development, a farsighted move that contrasted with its now nearly yearlong failure to curb the pandemic’s spread.
But some high-profile players will not be there. Representatives for Moderna and Pfizer said the company executives did not plan to attend. A senior administration official said on Monday that the companies were not included because the event would also include a top regulator from the F.D.A., Dr. Peter Marks, who is reviewing their vaccine applications.
Despite its “America First” theme, a major component of the executive order directs federal agencies to develop a policy for eventually selling or donating any additional doses to other countries.
“Once we’ve ensured the ability to meet the needs of the American people, it would then be in the interest of the United States to facilitate international access to a Covid vaccine,” a senior administration official told reporters on Monday.
The bulk of the global supply of vaccines has been claimed by wealthy countries like the United States, Canada, Britain and countries in Europe, leading to criticism that people in low- and middle-income countries will be left behind. The United States, for example, has declined to participate in a global initiative, called Covax, that is meant to make a vaccine available globally.
The federal government settled on 100 million doses from Pfizer in part because it was supporting a portfolio of other candidates, and because it was uncertain how well the company’s vaccine would perform in late-stage clinical trials, federal officials said.
Pfizer has struggled to meet initial expectations. This summer, the company predicted that it would have 100 million doses by the end of the year, but in November, it said manufacturing challenges forced the company to scale that back to 50 million. Vaccine manufacturing is notoriously unpredictable, and any number of factors — from shortages of raw ingredients to contaminated batches — could cause further setbacks.
As negotiations continue for additional doses, Pfizer is in a strategically important position, given that it is one of only two companies with applications pending in the United States for emergency authorization. If other vaccines prove to be promising, Pfizer could lose its leverage to dictate the terms of its agreements with the federal government.
The United States could use the Defense Production Act to compel Pfizer to prioritize the federal government in its domestic factories. But Pfizer and BioNTech have a duplicate production line in Europe, limiting the United States’ ability to control Pfizer’s global supply. Forcing Pfizer to serve the United States first could also be diplomatically delicate, given the company’s deals with other governments.
Warp Speed officials and Pfizer are still in regular contact, and more commitments to Pfizer and Moderna could be made in the coming weeks and months, one official said. But by January, a new administration will most likely play a significant role in how much more to invest in Pfizer before it could receive a full license of its vaccine from the F.D.A., when investments may shift to the private market.

Image
A Pfizer manufacturing plant in Puurs, Belgium. The company largely spurned the U.S. government’s help developing and manufacturing its vaccine.Credit...Virginia Mayo/Associated Press
But while both Pfizer and Moderna appear to have achieved success beyond what researchers even hoped, some of the other vaccine makers fell behind. Top federal health officials and outside experts have questioned the clinical trial data presented by AstraZeneca, a British-based company that is working with University of Oxford researchers.
Novavax, another vaccine maker that received huge support from the Trump administration, has delayed the start of its Phase 3 clinical trial in the United States in part because of setbacks in manufacturing enough doses for its trial. It has now said that it plans to start this month.
Johnson & Johnson has said it could report early results of its vaccine trial by January, and another Operation Warp Speed participant, Sanofi, has said it plans to start its late-stage vaccine trial before the end of the year.
Unlike other vaccine makers, Pfizer spurned federal subsidies for developing and manufacturing, shouldering the financial risk of the vaccine project itself. In a recent interview with The New York Times, the company’s chief executive, Dr. Albert Bourla, said he worried that government oversight would slow his firm’s work, not accelerate it. And he feared federal funding would come with strings attached. That has left Warp Speed officials with a less complete week-to-week understanding of the company’s manufacturing."

How quickly can the US distribute a Covid-19 vaccine? Here are the four biggest logistical challenges.

The US needs everything from freezers to specialty glass to distribute a vaccine.

www.vox.com

 

[dk168]

Vaccination using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine starts today in UK, yay!

DK

 

[MMtwo]

Not sure about this one...but a heads up, it can't hurt. The nose spray is available OTC now.

Xlear Submits COVID-19 Pre-Emergency Use Authorization Request with FDA Regarding Use of Xlear Nasal Spray to Help in Combating SARS-CoV-2

Xlear filing Pre-Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to FDA seeking authorization of Xlear Nasal Spray to help combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus

www.businesswire.com

 

[whitewave]

My sister’s father-in-law died this afternoon from covid-19. He was in his 80s and on dialysis... really nice calm gentlemanly man.

 

[MMtwo]

My sister’s father-in-law died this afternoon from covid-19. He was in his 80s and on dialysis... really nice calm gentlemanly man.

I'm so sorry for the loss of your sister's father in law.

 

[mellowyellowgirl]

I took a Covid test because I had a sore throat and they were screeching at us for not testing enough.

Negative

I figured I'd be negative since it would be all over the news if I was positive.

Anyways it's good to know that I can go grocery shopping without killing anyone. I've been isolating since I got the sore throat.

 

[mellowyellowgirl]

Hey guys is it as bad as they claim in the US?

They keep running doom and gloom articles on you guys. Mind you Australia is very dramatic with Covid and anyone who has it via community transmission will make the news (they don't publish names but they go into great detail about where you got it, where you've been etc).

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

I forgot to cancel mine and decided to go since we may be losing insurance in the coming months. The lobby was good. Just me and the two ladies at the desk, temperature checked, etc. Then I got brought back... All of the exam areas are open to each other (3/4 height wall with one entire open side) and there were three other patients at the same time I was there. They had me swish peroxide mouth wash prior to cleaning. I was uncomfortable during and after as there were too many people all sharing the same office space. Despite air cleaners, I did not feel it was enough. Had it not been for their lunch break closing the office, there would likely have been another three patients in during the time it took to exam & clean.

It was uncomfortable enough I cancelled DH's appointment even though it means we will likely have to reschedule without insurance.

how worrying
i thinl canceling hubby's appointment was a good thing to do

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

I took a Covid test because I had a sore throat and they were screeching at us for not testing enough.

Negative

I figured I'd be negative since it would be all over the news if I was positive.

Anyways it's good to know that I can go grocery shopping without killing anyone. I've been isolating since I got the sore throat.

im so glad its just a sore throat
if you were next door id be making you hot lemon drinks

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

My sister’s father-in-law died this afternoon from covid-19. He was in his 80s and on dialysis... really nice calm gentlemanly man.

I'm very sorry to hear this
too many grandpas and grandmas have been taken too soon

 

[House Cat]

Hey guys is it as bad as they claim in the US?

They keep running doom and gloom articles on you guys. Mind you Australia is very dramatic with Covid and anyone who has it via community transmission will make the news (they don't publish names but they go into great detail about where you got it, where you've been etc).

I’m in California. A big portion of our state is on lockdown. We are averaging 26,000 cases per day. Many hospitals are reaching capacity. Many towns have ICU’s at 100% capacity and we haven’t even seen the Thanksgiving surge yet.

Yeah, it’s as bad or worse than they say.

 

[whitewave]

Hey guys is it as bad as they claim in the US?

They keep running doom and gloom articles on you guys. Mind you Australia is very dramatic with Covid and anyone who has it via community transmission will make the news (they don't publish names but they go into great detail about where you got it, where you've been etc).

Yes, I would say it’s that bad.

 

[missy]

Allergy warning for Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine after UK health workers with allergy history suffer reaction | CNN

People with a "significant history of allergic reactions" should not be given the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, UK health authorities said Wednesday, after two healthcare workers had symptoms after receiving a shot the day before.

www.cnn.com

 

[rcjtraveler]

My sister’s father-in-law died this afternoon from covid-19. He was in his 80s and on dialysis... really nice calm gentlemanly man.

So very sorry to hear that.

 

[inne]

My sister’s father-in-law died this afternoon from covid-19. He was in his 80s and on dialysis... really nice calm gentlemanly man.

I am so sorry for your loss.

Health Canada approved the Pfizer vaccine today. It was never really in doubt, but hearing it announced on the radio was so overwhelming I teared up.

 

[kgizo]

Hey guys is it as bad as they claim in the US?

They keep running doom and gloom articles on you guys. Mind you Australia is very dramatic with Covid and anyone who has it via community transmission will make the news (they don't publish names but they go into great detail about where you got it, where you've been etc).

Sadly, it is that bad. There is a lot of ignorance and indifference.

 

[whitewave]

Yes, I would say it’s that bad.

As in people on my FB feed are starting to let people know they have Covid. Or recently had it. It’s probably 5 people right now, but it’s always been none, except for my friend’s 19 year old who died at the end of July from it.

2 of them are college kid friends of my kids.

 

[whitewave]

I just bought this on Etsy

 

[Dancing Fire]

I’m in California. A big portion of our state is on lockdown. We are averaging 26,000 cases per day. Many hospitals are reaching capacity. Many towns have ICU’s at 100% capacity and we haven’t even seen the Thanksgiving surge yet.

Yeah, it’s as bad or worse than they say.

According to the media 200K Californians should be dead by now.

 

[AGBF]

I just found out today, by reading the annual report of an organization that helps the mentally ill, that someone I know died of covid19 way back in April and I did not know it. This was a very special person to whom my father, a social worker and the first Mental Health Coordinator for our town, was very close. (The Mental Health Coordinator set up the first programs when the de-institutionalization of mental patients began. At that point psychiatric hospitals were still open, but hoping to downsize. Communities were hoping to start to provide services.)

I knew how terrible my father would feel if he were alive to see this much younger person, who was very sweet and who had had a very hard life after becoming schizophrenic in his late teens, die such a terrible death. I have tried to get in touch with the person's elderly mother.

This is so sad to me.

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

My heart break for the situations in the US
More people dying in a day than D-Day or Sept 11
Except ordinary peoole couldn't do anything to protect themselves from Sept 11 and D-Day was fighting a world war

and yet my freind sent me an email begging me not to get the vaccine
its not even in the country till next year but i will not hesitate
a bit of a sore arm and some cold and flu sympthoms are nothing


in other news Queensland has opened its boarders to NZ, so thats all of 'Oz now except WA but we still have to quareteen for two weeks on return
this is good news for families who are separated by the Tasman sea
but i think most people are happy to holiday closer to gone this summer

 

[mellowyellowgirl]

Australia is apparently in no rush to get the vaccine approved.

Their reasoning is that we barely have Covid and they aren't sure whether vaccinated people won't still pass on the disease so they aren't approving international travel anyway. Locked in for another year we are!!!

It's not a move I expected but I guess when they do roll out the vaccine, the rest of the world has already been guinea pigs so we'll be even more confident to take it.

 

[Matata]

Covid: Genes hold clues to why some people get severely ill

A study has identified genes that provide clues about why some people get seriously ill from Covid-19.

www.bbc.com

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

Australia is apparently in no rush to get the vaccine approved.

Their reasoning is that we barely have Covid and they aren't sure whether vaccinated people won't still pass on the disease so they aren't approving international travel anyway. Locked in for another year we are!!!

It's not a move I expected but I guess when they do roll out the vaccine, the rest of the world has already been guinea pigs so we'll be even more confident to take it.

at least they are telling you what going on
we have no idea when the vaccine is due

 

[House Cat]

280,000 cases in the US yesterday. I think the Thanksgiving surge has hit.