Are we winning the fight against COVID-19?: the vaccines are finally here
Vaccine: solution or problem?
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, population all over the global were looking for a divine solution in the form of medicine. Almost a year after the first COVID-19 case identified, scientists developed a vaccine. However, it didn’t sound as the end of the challenge: it is said the 70% of the global population need to be vaccinated in order for the COVID-19 strain to be eradicated.
Even before an effective vaccine against Covid-19 has been developed, national leaders face a dilemma: should they aim to immunise as large a part of the population as possible as quickly as possible, or does compulsory vaccination risk boosting a street movement already prone to conspiracy theories about “big pharma” and its government’s authoritarian tendencies?
I’d never let myself be vaccinated. ..I didn’t get a jab for the flu either, and I am still alive.
Riot Granny
Trusting the vaccine: the current challenge
The alliance of anti-vaxxers, neo-Nazi rabble-rousers and esoteric hippies, which has in recent weeks been filling town squares in cities such as Berlin, Vienna and Zurich is starting to trouble governments as they map out scenarios for re-booting their economies and tackling the coronavirus long term.
Preliminary results of a survey by the Vaccine Confidence Project and ORB International, carried out when infections in Europe were still rising rapidly in early April, show resistance to a vaccine to be especially high in countries that have managed to avoid the worst of the pandemic.
In Switzerland, where immunologists have proposed that mass vaccinations could take place as early as October, 20% of people questioned said they would not be willing to be vaccinated. In Austria, vaccine scepticism was similarly rife, with 18% of those questioned saying they would reject vaccination.
“Bad information ruins lives, and we all have a responsibility to fight it where we see it,...The coronavirus pandemic and the wave of false claims that followed demonstrated the need for a collective approach to this problem”
Government and big tech efforts to fight misinformation
As well as the three technology companies, the partnership includes the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Canada’s Privy Council Office, fact-checkers from South Africa, India, Argentina and Spain, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and the journalism non-profit First Draft.
Initial funding support comes from Facebook, which will help Full Fact draft the initial framework for January 2021. The two companies have a history together: Full Fact was the first UK fact-checking partner for Facebook’s anti-misinformation programme.
Vaccine misinformation has long been a challenge for social networks even before the imminent introduction of a Covid vaccine made the issue more urgent. For years, Facebook freely allowed anti-vaccination content, even as its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, spearheaded a $3bn charitable effort to “cure all diseases”. In March 2019, it relented slightly, and banned anti-vax ads that include misinformation about vaccines; in October this year, it went further, and banned all anti-vax advertising, except for that with a political message.
But “organic content” – posts and groups advocating against vaccines – is still allowed. Misinformation in that category is not explicitly banned, although it is eligible to be flagged for review by third-party fact-checkers.
YouTube, too, has only recently begun to take serious action against vaccine misinformation. In October, a week after Facebook’s policy change, Google’s video-sharing site announced a ban on misinformation about Covid vaccinations specifically. Under the policy, videos are not allowed to contain false allegations that a Covid vaccine would kill people or cause infertility, or claim that it would in some way implant microchips in recipients.
COVID-19 medicine updates: how are the researches evolving?
This why we need vaccines:
The vast majority of people are still vulnerable to coronavirus. It's only the current restrictions that are preventing more people from dying. A vaccine would teach our bodies to fight the infection by stopping us from catching coronavirus, or at least making Covid less deadly. Having a vaccine, alongside better treatments, is "the" exit strategy.
Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine
The big breakthrough came when Pfizer/BioNTech published its first results in November.
They showed the vaccine is up to 95% effective
The UK is due to get 40 million doses
It is given in two doses, three weeks apart
About 43,000 people have had the vaccine, with no safety concerns
The vaccine must be stored at a temperature of around -70C. It will be transported in a special box, packed in dry ice and installed with GPS trackers.
On 2 December, the UK became the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for widespread use.
On 8 December, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan became the first patient to receive the vaccine at University Hospital in Coventry, with 800,000 more doses expected to be given in the coming weeks.
Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine
Trials of the Oxford vaccine show it stops 70% of people developing Covid symptoms.
The data also shows a strong immune response in older people.
There is also intriguing data that suggests perfecting the dose could increase protection up to 90%
The UK has ordered 100 million doses
It is given in two doses
Trials with more than 20,000 volunteers are still continuing
This may be one of the easiest vaccines to distribute, because it does not need to be stored at very cold temperatures. It is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus from chimpanzees, that has been modified to not grow in humans.
Moderna vaccine
Moderna uses the same approach as the Pfizer vaccine.
It protects 94.5% of people, the company says
The UK will have five million doses by the spring
It is given in two doses, four weeks apart
30,000 have been involved in the trials, with half getting the vaccine and half dummy injections
It is easier to store than Pfizer's, because it stays stable at -20C for up to six months.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/23/europes-covid-predicament-how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-the-anti-vaxxers
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54947661
https://www.euronews.com/2020/12/09/which-parts-of-europe-are-likely-to-be-most-hesitant-about-a-covid-19-vaccine
https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/26/meet-the-scientists-fighting-misinformation-and-educating-people-about-covid-vaccines
