Promises vs Deliveries
Vaccine delivery is far short of goals set by the Trump administration. This will be Biden’s mission to solve.
Cuomo Asks Pfizer to Sell Vaccines Directly to New York
Due to severe supply shortages New York Governor Cuomo Asks Pfizer to Sell Vaccines Directly to New York
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he asked Pfizer Inc. if the state could buy vaccines directly from the company because the U.S. government has failed to increase supply.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded eligibility to more than 7 million New Yorkers from 5 million “practically overnight,” Cuomo said Monday in a letter to Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla. At the same time, the CDC hasn’t increased — and in some cases reduced — the supply to states. New York will get 250,000 doses this week, 50,000 fewer than last week.
At that rate, it would take seven months to inoculate those eligible, Cuomo said during a subsequent press briefing. Pfizer is supplying the federal government with 200 million doses of the vaccine after receiving emergency use authorization.
No state has ever purchased vaccines directly from the producer, but “my job is to pursue every avenue,” Cuomo said. He declined to say how many doses he was seeking or how he’ll pay for it, telling reporters, “First things first. First they have to agree.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer also is seeking to buy vaccines directly from Pfizer.
Before we can even consider direct sales to state governments, HHS [Health and Human Services] would need to approve that proposal based on the EUA granted to Pfizer by the FDA,” the New York-based company said in a statement.
California Halts Moderna Vaccine Batch
Due to severe allergic reactions California Halts Moderna Vaccine Batch.
After several people had apparent allergic reactions at one California clinic, state health officials on Sunday told providers across the state to pause administering doses from one COVID-19 vaccine lot that arrived from Moderna.
The move, made “out of an extreme abundance of caution,” means that 330,000 doses distributed to 287 providers across the state can’t be used amid an already slow vaccine rollout.
“A higher-than-usual number of possible allergic reactions were reported with a specific lot of Moderna vaccine administered at one community vaccination clinic,” California State Epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan said.
Officials said fewer than 10 people needed medical attention over the span of 24 hours, but didn’t clarify what their allergic reactions were.
“All appeared to be experiencing a possible severe allergic reaction during the standard observation period—a type of adverse event that the CDC reports some people have experienced when receiving a COVID-19 vaccine,” state health officials said in a news release.In a recommendation letter sent to providers Sunday, the state health department said it recognizes the extremely limited supply of vaccine, but added that there were no immediate replacement doses available during the pause.
Slow Start to Vaccinations
The AARP reports National Effort to Vaccinate Nursing Homes Is off to a Slow Start
Unlike the delivery of most COVID vaccines, which the federal government is handing off to individual states, the feds are spearheading vaccinations in nursing homes. Through its Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program, the government has contracted with CVS, Walgreens and other pharmacies in certain states to supply and administer vaccines at no cost to long-term care residents and staff at their facilities.
“We could have every nursing home patient vaccinated in the United States by Christmas,” Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar said in mid-December, describing the program.
CVS is partnering with over 40,000 facilities, including nursing homes, assisted living communities and other types of long-term care settings, to provide vaccines to up to 4 million residents and staff. Walgreens is partnering with roughly 35,000 facilities to provide vaccines to up to 3 million more.
But as of Jan. 11, only 937,028 long-term care residents and staff have received first doses of a COVID vaccine through the program, according to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker. While that’s likely an undercount due to reporting lags, the federal partnership has clearly fallen far behind initial targets.
Roughly 1 million out of 7 million received vaccinations by January 11, with HHS stating it would all be done by Christmas.
West Virginia Opts Out
West Virginia, which opted out of the federal program and instead used local pharmacies to administer vaccines, became the first state in the country to complete its first round of long-term care vaccinations on Dec. 30.
It’s amazing and it’s far ahead of any other state in the nation,” West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said in a December news conference announcing that first-round vaccinations would be complete in all of the state’s 214 long-term care facilities by the new year.
HHS Says Vaccinate More
Six days ago Bloomberg reported U.S. Urges States to Widen Vaccine Access After Slow Start
The Trump administration will encourage states to widen access to Covid-19 vaccines as part of an effort to speed up a stumbling immunization campaign.
Health officials on Tuesday will push states to expand the shots’ availability to anyone 65 and older, regardless of underlying conditions that might put them at greater risk of severe disease, and anyone 65 or younger with such a condition, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Tuesday in an interview with Fox & Friends.
The U.S. also will no longer hold back second doses of the vaccine in order to make more shots available immediately, according to the Surgeon General.
Questions Abound
How do you speed things up when Pfizer reduces delivery and California quarantines 330,000 doses?
Would you take the Pfizer vaccine? Moderna?
Meanwhile, the slow start to the vaccine rollout just got a slower due to supply reductions and at least one questionable batch.
Mish
Incredible and OUTRAGEOUS how the media are brainwashing people again ! This time convincing, or even morally arm- twisting us into having the NEVER tried before mRNA shit injected into our, mostly, healthy system. It is only a matter of time for DISCRIMINATORY measures to be imposed on people refusing the jab ! An enormous post vaccination disaster might be looming at the horizon, NOBODY really knows, we ll find out next year or later! Hey but, don t worry, have your shots, clueless politicians and their clueless media want you to, and with profit driven big pharma companies, covering themselves against possible mishaps by means of secret contracts, everything gonna be great !
I found it ironic that Cuomo who rightfully complained about states competing with each other for ppe and ventilators suddenly is in favor of that model for vaccines? One word for that “hypocrite”
As far as allergic reactions in California, it seems like a production issue since it appears isolated to one batch.
The country does need to move forward with mass vaccinations. If we don’t things only get worse. The virus is mutating to a more transmissible type which can only mean more deaths. The more this virus is out there the more it has a chance to mutate further
Effectiveness of 19%? MSM have not been straightforward in providing comprehensive information on vaccines.
Since hearing of the doctor whose platelet level went to 0 within 24 hours of taking the vaccine and died of a brain hemorrhage, I plan on waiting at least 6 months. Both vaccines were rushed and, like the Ford Pinto, are unsafe at any speed.
40 million vaccinations so far world wide, and one doctor who died of thrombocytopenia……POSSIBLY related to his vaccination, but not known for sure.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want to take a 0.000000025% risk like that….just to make sure I didn’t die gasping for breath from COVID.
Investing isn’t the only area plagued by poor risk assessment.
Not just ‘one doctor’, Eddie….more and more serious problems are being reported now…..I said so from the beginning, I don t want none of them…., Maybe, just maybe, I ll have Sanofi’s, which will be available, at least in Europe, later this year…. Don t ask me for technical details but the Sanofi vaccine is said to be quite different from the others…
There are several problems…..but the biggest problem is ignorance…..about how many of the vaccination “problems” are background noise.
Like Norway, where 45 elderly nursing home residents die every day, year in and year out…
World-wide immune thrombocytopenia affects 33 people per 100K population, year in and year out.
The numbers of the problems…..some few of which are real and should be noted….are so small in comparison to the numbers of people being vaccinated, which will be in the billions, as to make it very tricky to sort out.
A very safe assumption is that if you get Corona, you have a good chance of “problems”….so much so that getting a vaccine is about the most asymmetric bet you could ever make,
Will some few people die or get sick from the vaccines?….almost certainly. But many, many more will die or have long term ill effects from COVID.
The internet will be full of stories about problems with the vaccine. Most of those will be lies spun by people wanting to be “influencers” to generate clicks. That’s the world we live in.
It does seem odd for people to be concerned about a 0.001% chance of dying or having a long term effect from a vaccine, when 1% of the people who get covid die, and another 5-10% have long term effects.
Social media changes what people focus on…..and the further down some rabbit hole they already are, the less chance they ever have of seeing daylight…..ever again.
somebody in the world died today while driving. I decided not to drive … and post about it. give me a like please
As a medical professional who works with Covid patients in ICU I got the Moderna vaccine voluntarily. A lot of my colleagues had soreness, fever. I had no side-effects whatsoever.
I’m going to wait a couple of years or so to get a Covid vaccine shot.
Norway reported 29 deaths using mRNA: https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1350523602140094467?s=20
I saw the Norway report. Norway went 100% Pfizer, I think….and my understanding was that they were vaccinating some extremely elderly people…..nonagenarians known to be near the end of life, for instance. I see they have revised that to “over 75”.
29 deaths…I just wonder what the ages were for ALL those 29….and what their real medical condition was when they got the vax.
No direct link believed., says Norway. Not in any cases.
I’d like to congratulate West Virginia on being first in something other than opioid and meth addiction for the first time in its history.
Faint praise.
Mish, on a wider vista it’s national security being tested,
Future defence will depend on the speed of being able to develop and roll-out anti-virals amongst civilian populations.
U
Kidding or not, that’s a reality, new viruses are regularly entering our sphere from bats that have been isolated for tens of thousands of years as land is expanded in 3rd world regions, or, if you prefer the Hangar 18 route, South Korea certainly has geneticists working on biologic agents.
Either way, Pharma has to get faster, they certainly did this past year.
A co-worker told me today his family of 4 had COVID at Thanksgiving. The symptoms were so mild that they would not have known if the son had not gone for a precautionary test based on having a fever. I asked him if he was still going to get the vaccine? He flat out said, “NO!” He explained the mRNA in Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines trigger the body to get ready to fight off a virus, but if no virus arrived, then there is a risk of the body attacking itself. He did clarify he would consider taking a vaccine based on a weakened form of the virus.
And this coworker based his worries about auto-immune disease side effects on what, exactly?
A video on Youtube maybe? It’s been completely debunked, fwiw.
If he has had Covid, there would seem to be no benefit to getting the vaccine at this time anyway.
The nice thing about the mRNA viruses is that they can’t reproduce, or have long term effects. They go in, and most of them are destroyed immediately. A few enter cells, and those cells produce millions of spike proteins, but then either stop, or the cell dies, after which the mRNA is gone. mRNA technology is much safer than a conventional vaccine, and obviously faster to develop as well. Vaccine technology took a tremendous step forward this year.
should have read “The nice thing about the mRNA vaccines…”
I would take either, but my preference is the Moderna. I expect to get it in late March or early April based on the current schedule.
Promising to release more from a stock pile that doesn’t exist.
Nice parting gift for a new administration….whoops, thousands die as result of states’ not knowing to prepare.
Thousands have already been killed via encouraged complacency over “fake flu” and “HCQ cures it”. What’s a few thousand more?
As for California, several reactions at a single location of 287 statewide, sounds like the reaction wasn’t to the vaccine but something else specific to that location, the reactions would be widespread.
“A rough estimate of vaccine efficacy against developing covid-19 symptoms, with or without a positive PCR test result, would be a relative risk reduction of 19% (see footnote)—far below the 50% effectiveness threshold for authorization set by regulators.”
I agree that the data needs to be shared asap. More than 40million people have been vaccinated with at least one round of something…..worldwide. So some of these questions should be answerable in the very near future.
I have taken the Moderna…first dose. Due for the next on on the 26th.
Of the eight people on my team, seven have gotten round one. We had one person who had some swelling at the injections site…possibly a delayed hypersensitivity reaction. It resolved and she was told she can have round two.
The rest of us had some tenderness in the arm that was injected…..mine was 3 days.
One team member complained of nausea, which passed in a couple of days.
The Texas guidelines on the Group 1A and 1B groups were so strict……that in terms of actual eligibility none of us is actually even eligible strictly speaking) , as of yet. (Other than me and my wife, since we’re over 65. We made the old age cut.
Fortunately, the guidelines are being interpreted a little more loosely than they’re written. We have found a source that will vaccinate our people. I hope to have everybody vaccinated this week.
Excellent!
I received the first shot of the Moderna vaccine a couple of weeks ago. Other than a sore arm for a few days I am fine.