Well that’s not very reassuring … especially the allegation of using an experimental drug to treat a meningitis outbreak in Nigeria in 1996.
https://www.worldpress.org/Africa/1190.cfm
This new vaccine has been suitably ‘speed’ tested has it?
Think I’ll be happy at the back of the queue so I can see the effects on the first guinea pigs.
This is a really good article giving details of logistics and storage of the pfizer vaccine in the US : COVID vaccine: Complex distribution supply chain will follow approval
Pfizer has merged with a zillion companies since this was written…
Yes, I suppose so Mags.
I suppose they don’t know if we will still be immune after a year until it has been used for a year.
If they do manage to vaccinate 20m people this will slow down the virus sufficiently even if just for a few months to help us back to a more normal life. It reduces the number of hosts that the virus can use to reproduce. The less a virus can jump from host to host the less chance it has to mutate.
Once we have mass vaccination we should have robust control of our borders because there will be a large number of countries in the world where vaccination is limited or impossible. I’m not so sure they have thought that far ahead.
Yes, that makes sense Annie.
What about compulsory vaccination for immigrants too, else we will back to square one again.
They don’t let puppies go abroad/enter, without Rabies vaccs, so why humans without Corvid jabs?
I read Merkel is now talking tightening of the EU border. But that’s more about terrorism.
In the UK:
How will we keep the Covid vaccine at a cold enough temperature? - BBC News (extracts)
It cannot be removed from a temperature of -70C (-94F) more than FOUR times.
In its own disclosure notice, Pfizer acknowledges there are “challenges related to our vaccine candidate’s ultra-low temperature formulation and attendant storage, distribution and administration requirements”.
The vaccine will be distributed from Pfizer centres in the US, Germany and Belgium. It will need to travel both on land and by air, face potential storage in distribution centres in between stages and the final hurdle will be local delivery to clinics, surgeries, pharmacies, hospitals - anywhere the vaccine will be administered.
As revealed by the Wall Street Journal, Pfizer has developed a special transport box the size of a suitcase, packed with dry ice and installed with GPS trackers, which can keep up to 5,000 doses of the vaccine at the right temperature for 10 days, as long as it remains unopened. The boxes are also reusable.
The box is not likely to be cheap. Head of sales Paul Harrison says a standard chilled transport box, which will retain a temperature of up to -8C (not -80C) for five days and is big enough to hold 1,200 vaccines, costs about £5,000 per unit - although they can be re-used thousands of times.
The vaccine can survive for a further FIVE days once thawed, Pfizer has said, but this does not buy a great deal of extra time.
Public Health England says that in the UK “national preparations” are under way regarding both central storage and distribution of the vaccine across the country, but declines to give details.
As it stands, extreme cold storage is certainly not commonplace, and your local GP is unlikely to have it.
Some institutions, such as universities and research labs, do have the right storage capacity. In the UK, universities shared resources at the height of the first wave of the pandemic, including PPE-making equipment and ventilators.
Inevitably, contracts will be given to large private-sector hauliers with links to the current Tory government - big bucks for buddies … 
And that’s exactly what happens when enough people have caught the virus and recovered Annie. That’s why Lockdown has increased the virus’s longevity. If this was not the case, the human race would have perished a long time ago. The human body has the tools to protect itself from viral and bacterial attack, only the sick and elderly should need protection.
It’s not exactly the same at all. You don’t contract the sickness from the vaccine. The virus can mutate faster when it spreads like wildfire through a population. Particularly when it jumps to animals then back.
There is not much point in vaccinating everyone here, then letting in unvaccinated immigrants, holiday makers, and business travellers IMO.
It’s exactly the same Annie, bot are ways of getting your body to identify and destroy the virus. If it doesn’t kill you first that is…
Russia declares Sputnik-V vaccine '92% effective’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-54899679
The Russia team say their own interim results, which hadn’t been expected so soon, come from their own analysis of data from 16,000 volunteers – those who’ve so far received two injections with Sputnik V, 21 days apart. Twenty caught the virus, some of whom had received the placebo.
Russia was widely criticised for its triumphalism back in August when it declared Sputnik V “the world’s first” to be registered. At that point, Phase 3 trials had not even begun.
Some 36,000 people have since had at least one of the two injections required, and the developers report no serious side-effects.
Several volunteers we spoke to at a Moscow health centre said they felt fine, though opinion polls show many Russians remain sceptical about receiving the vaccine.
The developers have also revealed for the first time that 10,000 Russians in high-risk professions, including doctors, have been vaccinated with Sputnik V outside of the formal, clinical trials.
AFAIK, the Chinese are still trialling and haven’t published their “success rate” yet, but I’ll guess at 94% …
Pfizer and BioNTech could make $13bn from coronavirus vaccine
I have no doubt that some forum members will condone this profiteering but I find the “arrangement” appalling and prefer to congratulate the rival US drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, which, along with AstraZeneca, is developing a coronavirus vaccine in partnership with Oxford University, and has pledged to make their vaccines available on a not-for-profit basis during this pandemic. AstraZeneca, which is charging governments $3 to $5 a dose, also said last week that low-income countries would receive its vaccine on a cost basis “in perpetuity”.
Even if a vaccine proves successful it will still take a long time before the vacine is produced and distributed to enough people to enable international travel to be restarted.
Qantas is still saying it is unlikely that travel to and from the UK and USA will commence before the middle of next year and is still looking at new routes in Asia which could become available as approved destinations.
Even though Kiwis can now fly to Australia the NZ government does not think Australia has reduced the incidence of the disease enough to allow travel into the land of the long white cloud.
NSW has had no new locally transmitted cases for five consecutive days.
Covid vaccine: Major new trial starts in UK
A major trial of a vaccine to protect against Covid-19 has launched in the UK - the THIRD such trial in the country.
The jab - designed by the Belgian company Janssen - uses a genetically modified common cold virus to train the immune system. It comes a week after preliminary results showed another vaccine offered 90% protection. However, many types of vaccine are likely to be needed to end the pandemic.
“Herd immunity”, even with vaccines, is a long way off … 
Here in U.S. a vaccine might be distributed to front line workers and those in nursing homes by first quarter 2021. It can’t come soon enough for me.
There are still high hopes for the Queensland Uni vaccine but early days yet.
Scientists from the University of Queensland (UQ) say pre-clinical trials of their vaccine show it triggers the immune system to protect against the disease.
The UQ vaccine, which uses what is known as “molecular clamp” technology, is different to the Oxford University-AstraZeneca chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine which the Federal Government signed a “letter of intent” over last week.
The UQ candidate has been in human trials since early July, and although it is behind the Oxford University candidate in the testing process, it is considered by most experts to be the most promising of the handful of Australian vaccines under development.
Covid vaccine: Pfizer says it’s ‘94% effective in over-65s’
More data released from their ongoing phase three trial suggests it works equally well in people of all ages, races and ethnicities.
The companies say they will now apply for authorisation for emergency use of the jab in the US.
The findings are based on two doses given to more than 41,000 people around the world.
Interesting study trying to find out why children don’t have the same response as adults and how this can be used to fight the virus
