This will be legitimately short this week–a non-COVID related work project is taking more time than originally anticipated.

Ebola–

No new cases in Guinea this week. Still on the clock for the official end of the current outbreak.

In other hemorrhagic virus news, there are two cases of Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever confirmed in Uganda. This is a tick borne virus that is similar in symptoms to Ebola, with case fatality rates of 9-50%. Contact with infected fluids, particularly blood, can spread the virus patient to patient. There is no specific treatment, although ribavirin is effective in test tubes and has some anecdotal clinical evidence. The tick is endemic to this region up through parts of Eastern Europe (hence Crimea), and was first identified in 1944. Usually you have to be around livestock, that are carriers of both virus and tick. The threat of pandemic from this is virtually non-existent, since it’s tick borne. But just in case some bored writer somewhere tries to catch some eyeballs with another exotic viral disease…

Coronavirus–

–First and hot off the presses… the CDC has revised mask guidance yet again. Basically, if you are vaccinated, enjoy that mask free livin’ bro..

–The US continues to re-open, although some psychological damage clearly remains. Some surveys out this week showing that -vaccinated- people are actually -more- likely to report being -less- comfortable with certain activities of previous daily living, like attending crowded concerts, than the unvaccinated. Why is an excellent question, since they are, you know, vaccinated, but I suppose it speaks to risk tolerance in a way.

Going the almost opposite direction is wild internet rumoring among those less likely to get vaccinated that exposure to vaccinated people can somehow transmit the spike protein, which will interfere with fertility because “science.” They are now recommending masks and social distancing from the vaccinated. Ordinarily I would mock this relentlessly, but I am on the clock today, so suffice to say that this is not, at all, how any of this actually works. As we discussed, with the vaccines, spike protein production is transient and lasts no more than a few days at most. The cells producing it are the ones your T-cells will take out as training for how to fight the actual virus when they meet it. The vaccinated are NOT shedding spike protein that anyone knows about. There is no known association between fertility and vaccination, and none that is remotely likely. Again, if the spike protein -were- able to cause this, we should be reading about infertility among SARS-CoV-2 recovered patients (since the virus itself has and produces lots of spike protein during their infection), and we are not. Vaccination reduces the need to use masks and social distancing. So yes, Virginia, absolutely all of this rumor is as wrong as could possibly be, and other than the “everything about it–literally everything” is as accurate as one would expect from the internet rumor mill.

–Around the horn, cases have fortunately started to level in India and should probably be dropping through next week. Other parts of Asia not so lucky, as cases rise in a number of other countries. That includes Taiwan, one of the island based “success stories” that, because island, can restrict access through ports and airports -and- aggressively monitor anyone they do let it. That also includes mainland China, which admitted to a small bump in cases to the low 20s, all from foreign travel. They also restricted access to Tibet’s side of the Himalayas this week, so make of that all you will.

–South Africa is seeing a very slight increase in cases this week, even as their vaccination numbers have taken off like a rocket. The Africa desk at the WHO attributes this to attitudes towards social distancing perhaps being a little looser than recommended, but we will continue to follow.

–The Seychelles got some prime headline time this week. This is one of the islands that has vaccinated a huge chunk of its population. For those unfamiliar, the Seychelles is an English speaking island nation just north east of Madagascar, on the edge of the Indian Ocean. It became independent of Britain in 1976.

For their vaccination campaign, they used a combination of the Chinese Sinopharm and AstraZeneca’s SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. We’ve discussed the AZ vaccine before (recall it’s one of the modified adenovirus vaccines). The Sinopharm vaccine is a traditional inactivated virus vaccine–they took SARS-CoV-2 from a patient, got it to grow in kidney cells for mass production, and then they kill the virus before injecting it as a vaccine. Both the Sinopharm and AZ vaccine have published efficacy in the high 70%s.

That’s an important number to keep in mind, because the Seychelles has had a spike in SARS-CoV-2 cases with several hundred cases per week lately. Percentage-wise, that’s a pretty solid number for them. Most concerning was that a third of the people who got COVID had been fully vaccinated. None of the fully vaccinated positives had severe COVID though (not a surprise–this has been consistent with the vaccines in general regardless of manufacture). So the WHO has planned to look into it.

Now, one third of cases getting past the vaccines -would- be a significant bummer for the pandemic in general if this was a variant somehow getting past them.

HOWEVER, you should lose no sleep over this right now. In fact, I’m not adjusting the baseline case of “US is past the pandemic from a medical standpoint sometime in July”.

Two reasons. 1) Remember the efficacy quotes for Sinopharm and AZ above? Even among the fully vaccinated, you would expect mild COVID breakthrough in 20-25% of patients. Off the top. 2) We’re talking pretty small numbers of new cases in the Seychelles–just a couple hundred patients. A few patients here and there are enough to shift the percentage of fully vaccinated patients in the new cases to 33% by random chance alone (just a slight cluster of patients where the vaccines didn’t take will do it). Even then, an improperly stored/shipped lot of vaccine or other problems with the vaccine lot on Seychelles to where it was less than the expected high 70%s efficacious is more likely than a super mutant COVID strain.

So not a vaccine resistant, highly infectious mutant until proven otherwise at this point. We’ll keep an eye on it, but new cases in the Seychelles are already dropping, and random chances is far in the lead at the moment.

–In other vaccine news, Pfizer got approval to extend the vaccine down to age 12. This was based off of 2,260 patients ages 12-15 enrolled in a double blind placebo controlled study in the US. The side effect profile was identical to the adult patient study (flu/hangover like symptoms lasting 1-3 days post injection), and are more common on the second dose than the first. In 1,005 patients who got the vaccine, there were no cases of COVID. However, among the 978 receiving placebo, there were 16 cases of COVID (100% effective, but this will drop a bit once more kids get the vaccine).

So no showstoppers, and the FDA is being very reasonable extending the vaccination window down to 12 years of age based on this data.

Again, there are NO reports of fertility or other problems among kids in this group who got actual COVID, and thus similar problems from the vaccine are VERY unlikely. In fact, kids who get COVID generally have a much, much more mild course, as we have covered previously.

–Speaking of Pfizer, their vaccine partner’s CEO (BioNTech) stated that there is “no evidence” that its vaccine needs adapting to cope with new variants.

And this is the difference in the marketing savvy of a major pharmaceutical giant that is notorious for focusing on buying its early phase drug development and counting on its expertise on late stage trials, sales and marketing and one of the smaller biotechs from whom it purchases its pipeline. After all, you may recall a recent update where the CEO of Pfizer suggested that vaccine boosters might be needed for Pfizer’s bottom line to combat SARS-CoV-2 variants in the near future, and for some time to come. You may note that this week, the other half of the partnership, who actually created the vaccine, has a slight disagreement on the science of that claim. Considering just the US and UK numbers, I would say the BioNTech CEO has a slight lead here.

However, we have been able to use our super secret Pharma industry back channels to capture the Pfizer CEO’s texted response to his BioNTech counterpart exclusively for you:

–And that’s it this week. Your chances of catching Ebola are equivalent to the chances that is the actual text message between those two.

–Your chances of catching coronavirus are equivalent to that being pretty close to the conversation anyways…

–And lastly, your zeitgeist reading. First paragraph especially hits home. Taibbi’s interview with CJ Hopkins.

<Paladin>