Coronavirus SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19)

[suresh]

As per report, they air-shipped its COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin (16.5 lakh doses) to 11 cities in India, those are Gannavaram (Vijayawada), Guwahati, Patna, Delhi, Kurukshetra, Bangalore, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Chennai and Lucknow.

Bharat Biotech's Covaxin shipped to 11 cities in India

Oh, crap. What the hell are they doing? Why isn't there a lawsuit yet?

Lots of "free" volunteers for phase 3 of both Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute vaccines. Vaccinations start this weekend in Chennai. The line from the government is that you need not take it if you have issues -- I expect judges to accept that.

[jayakris]

Lots of "free" volunteers for phase 3 of both Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute vaccines. Vaccinations start this weekend in Chennai. The line from the government is that you need not take it if you have issues -- I expect judges to accept that.

Is the Government or B.Biotech taking responsibility (and pay for medical care) if somebody comes down with health problems, though? Say, somebody gets paralysis or psoriasis or something, who is going to decide if it was caused by the vaccine or not?

Just pray that nothing will go wrong. But that doesn't usually work in India. If it can go wrong, it will.

[jaydeep]

Lots of "free" volunteers for phase 3 of both Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute vaccines. Vaccinations start this weekend in Chennai. The line from the government is that you need not take it if you have issues -- I expect judges to accept that.

In Bhopal, they paid money for Phase 2 volunteers.

It was in early December that we heard about vans of People's Hospital coming in the neighbourhood behind the Union Carbide factory, and announcing that they would give Rs 750 and an injection for coronavirus to all the people who come forward.

At that time itself, it looked suspicious because they were alluring people by promising money. And no one was told that they were going to participate in a trial, and not getting vaccinated against the coronavirus.

It is the informed consent form that is the bedrock of any drug trial as it explains the purpose of the study, the risks involved, inclusion and exclusion and also the rights of the participants.

When we asked them about the consent form, they said they were asked to sign many forms, but they were not given a copy of the signed consent form.

When we asked them whether anyone read it out to them or explain to them what was written in the form, the answer was in the negative.

In fact, they told us that they were told nothing bad would happen to them, and if at all they faced any problem they could call the hospital, and they would be taken care of.

The volunteers were given a one-page participant information sheet which had the name of the principal investigator, his initials, the participant's initials, the date of the two shots.

They were also given a bunch of empty sheets where they were supposed to record what they were feeling.

Why would these people do that when they had no idea they were part of a trial? For them, they got vaccinated and also got Rs 750. So, it is over.

[jayakris]

^^ That is all wrong. I think the Modi Gvernment is asking for trouble. Maybe with good intentions, to move as fast as possible when people are dying all around from Covid... but letting thing like above happen, is bound to be made into a huge scandal soon by the opposition and hell will break loose. Once again, do it first and ask questions later, is the current Government's modus operandi. They usually end up paying for that. Like demonetization, like farm reforms, and I guess, now vaccination.

[suresh]

Just pray that nothing will go wrong. But that doesn't usually work in India. If it can go wrong, it will.

That is what I am afraid! One shouldn't compromise on safety and efficiency.

[jayakris]

That is what I am afraid! One shouldn't compromise on safety and efficiency.

Actually I have no problems with compromising on efficacy. But not safety. Efficacy is a matter of whether the effort on vaccinating a person was worth it or not. If it is only 25% effective, it is only that good. So what??... But safety is much more of a serious issue.

At worst, on the efficacy matter, people may have some legal or ethical argument that they also had the right to get the more effective vaccine Covishield, like somebody else got, but were not given the chance (if Covaxin is proven worse in efficacy later, that is).

But safety is different. To be fair, the government has repeated that they are sure of the safety part and that enough data is already there for that (which is true)... But even if that is true, and even if nothing has gone wrong with the people in the phase-II test so far, all it takes is some psorasis or paralysis from entirely different reasons that happens in somebody. India has enough people waiting for the Government's blood that they will make a huge scandal out of it, and the vaccination regime will suffer. That is what I meant when I said "if something can go wrong, it will". The Modi Government is asking for trouble by not being sufficiently forthcoming on what they are doing. Just like in most other instances.

[suresh]

@jay the numbers in phase 2 are too small to draw conclusions. Phase 3 has tens of thousands of volunteers.

[prasen9]

Sinovac is 50% effective. But, I'd still use it.

[jayakris]

@jay the numbers in phase 2 are too small to draw conclusions. Phase 3 has tens of thousands of volunteers.

I believe it is not so on the safety matter, based on my limited understanding so far. On efficacy, yes. You have to wait to see how many get infected after a long enough period.. Also get enough people who got exposed and developed antibodies. I mean, if you take all those who took the vaccine and place them in New Zealand, you will feel that the vaccine to be 100% effective, no?... So, efficacy is much more difficult to establish and careful sampling with enough numbers are needed from places where they might get exposed to the virus, I suppose... But on safety, they seem to know that they can develop fairly high confidence after a fairly quick period (and everybody who took the vaccine is an equally-weighted candidate in that data set). Much more straight-forward on side-effects and safety. Or so it seems.

The scientists have also generally spoken like that. I saw even Dr. Kang say that she does not worry about the safety issue.

[jayakris]

Further drop in case numbers. Only +15.7K today... From around 957K tests at 1.64%... 189 deaths. The seven-day average dropped by another 349 to 16.3K...

In fact, only 6.7K cases were from outside of Kerala and Maharashtra (who had 9K between them). Unbelievable, knowing that just 4 districts in AP at one time had as many cases! AP hardly gets even 200 cases these days.

[jayakris]

A pretty good article in The Hindu about the vaccine matter - Vaccine dilemma: to take or not to take Covaxin

It is a mess. Take a look at the comments at the bottom. Lots of people with lots of reasonable comments (and a few who are ready to just trust the Government and distrust the others as anti-Government).

[jaydeep]

I think, the government is using British formula, divide and rule. Who support they are nationalists and other consider as anti-nationalists, feeling sad about overall situation.

[jayakris]

I think, the government is using British formula, divide and rule. Who support they are nationalists and other consider as anti-nationalists, feeling sad about overall situation.

I don't think it is anything that deliberate from the Government and BJP other than at the time of elections. The polarization carries on by itself after that. Dividing (polarization) was mostly the result of how fast it happens with social media. Politicians, politically-oriented people, and press/media folks around the world (UK, USA, India especially) have all got totally polarized, but grassroots people are even more polarized. It's everywhere. I think social media echo chambers are the main culprit. It is a fairly simple thing to use some basic analytics and target people for partial-information (and misinformation) supply through a few operatives, so political parties have been using it quite a bit in the last few years. Initially for just winning elections, but then the echo chambers are often out of the control of those parties too. All this leads to extremely problematic results.

I think BJP and the leftists (especially in Kerala) have been the best at this scheme to vilify the opposition to win elections (and Congress has been pathetic at it)... Naturally the opposition folks gravitate more and more strongly to the side that says the Government is autocratic and is trying to divide and rule. Can't blame them for feeling that, and saying that... The issue is that it continues and grows in strength at the grass roots, the people have all got polarized already even when the politicians aren't that polarized in their views. Nobody has much control of the polarized echo chambers they created so easily. It then goes on and on... Everybody is to blame, but ultimately the social media information echo chambers that provoke nasty passions are the problem. Can't put the genie back in the bottle that easily now.

Your are right. It is a sad situation.

[prasen9]

What Jay said is absolutely true.

Of course, I do not think that this government has done divide and rule specifically. But, they see Hindutva and majority politics as a winning strategy and have ridden that all along.

[usaindia]

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
Almost 1.3 million people received 2 doses.