By Reuters Staff
LONDON (Reuters) - The COVID-19 epidemic
in Britain has retreated slightly, with the reproduction “R” number estimated
to be below 1, suggesting that England’s second national lockdown is stemming
infections, government scientists said on Friday.
The number
of new infections across Britain is shrinking by between 0% and 2% every day,
the UK Government Office for Science said, after it was estimated to be growing
between 0% and 2% in last week’s release.
The R number
was estimated to be between 0.9 and 1, meaning every 10 people infected will go
on to infect between 9 and 10 people, down from last week’s range of 1.0-1.1.
Government
scientists said the estimates were based on latest data for the United Kingdom
up to Nov. 24, but that lags meant the impact of national restrictions
introduced in England on Nov. 5 were only just being seen and could not yet be
fully evaluated.
“R estimates
for England may continue to decline in the future and may be below 1 for all
regions already,” the Government Office for Science said in a statement.
The lockdown
in England - home to around 85% of the UK’s total population - expires on
Wednesday and will be replaced with a regional system of tiered restrictions.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain/covid-19-epidemic-in-uk-shrinking-r-rate-estimated-below-1-idUKKBN2871MI
AstraZeneca responds to
concerns about COVID-19 vaccine candidate Nov. 26, 2020 / 2:06 PM
Nov. 26 (UPI) -- AstraZeneca and Oxford University responded Thursday to questions
raised over trial results for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
The pharmaceutical company said Monday that its vaccine candidate, AZD1222, had an
average efficacy of 70%.
Some in the scientific community questioned the results and
the methods of the trial and criticized the way the company initially disclosed
its data. The company said a mistake led to some trial participants receiving the
initial dose at half strength.
On Thursday, AstraZeneca told CNBC that it adhered to the
"highest standards" in its studies.
RELATED Fauci:
'People should feel confident' COVID-19 vaccines safe, effective
"More data will continue to accumulate and additional
analysis will be conducted refining the efficacy reading and establishing the
duration of protection," a spokesperson told the news outlet.
The questions emerged after a smaller group of 2,741 trial
participants received a half dose of the vaccine initially followed by a full
dose at least a month later, with results showing 90% efficacy. A second group
of 8,895 participants received two full doses of the vaccine at least a month
apart, with results showing 62% efficacy.
Oxford University attributed the lower dose to "a difference in the
manufacturing process."
"The methods for measuring the concentration are now
established and we can ensure that all batches of vaccines are now
equivalent," Oxford said.
Some U.S. scientists, including Moncef Slaoui, chief of the
White House vaccine effort, Operation Warp Speed, said the 90% efficacy result
was only shown for low-risk participants younger than age 55.
An analyst from investment bank SVB Leerink said the
company's trials didn't meet FDA requirements for populations at increased
risk, including minorities, severe cases, previously infected individuals and
elderly.
AstraZeneca said an external Data Safety Monitoring Board
monitored the study for safety and quality.
The vaccine candidate is the third to announce preliminary
results of late-stage trials. Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna each reported
early results showing 95% efficacy for their COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
Dr. Anthony Fauci , the nation's leading infectious
diseases expert, has sought to reassure people to feel confident in the safety
and efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine once regulatory approval is granted.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/11/26/AstraZeneca-responds-to-concerns-about-COVID-19-vaccine-candidate/8641606413179/
AstraZeneca CEO expects to run
new global trial of COVID-19 vaccine - Bloomberg November 26, 2020 4:55 PM
By Reuters Staff
(Reuters) - AstraZeneca is likely to run an additional
global trial to assess the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine using a lower
dosage, its chief executive was quoted as saying on Thursday amid questions
over the results of its late-stage study.
Instead of
adding the trial to an ongoing U.S. process, AstraZeneca might launch a fresh
study to evaluate a lower dosage of its vaccine that performed better than a
full dosage, Pascal Soriot told Bloomberg News.
“Now that
we’ve found what looks like a better efficacy we have to validate this, so we
need to do an additional study,” he said, adding that the new, likely global,
study could be faster because it would need fewer subjects as the efficacy was
already known to be high.
The news
comes as AstraZeneca faces questions about its success rate that some experts
say could hinder its chances of getting speedy U.S. and EU regulatory approval.
----
Soriot said he did not expect the additional trial to delay British and
European regulatory approvals.
Asked about
the Bloomberg report, an AstraZeneca spokesman said there was strong merit in
continuing to investigate the half-dose/full dose regimen. Any further insights
from the data would be added to those from existing trials that are being
prepared for regulatory submission, he said.
Running an
additional trial might not be too much of a complication for the British
drugmaker in the race to develop a vaccine to help tame the pandemic, which has
killed more than a million people and roiled the global economy.
Helen
Fletcher, professor of immunology at the London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine, said another trial would not necessarily delay getting a
green light as efficacy in the higher dose regime still met the World Health
Organization’s target. It was not unusual to run new studies on approved
vaccines, she said.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-astrazeneca/astrazeneca-ceo-expects-to-run-new-global-trial-of-covid-19-vaccine-bloomberg-idUKKBN286219
Next, some very useful vaccine
links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most
informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World Health Organization -
Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines . https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine
Tracker . https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford Website . https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
FDA information . https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/download
Regulatory Focus COVID-19
vaccine tracker . https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some more useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
https://rt.live/
Covid19info.live
https://wuflu.live/
Winter
Watch.
The Arctic winter sea-ice expansion and
northern hemisphere snow cover. From around mid-October, the northern
hemisphere snow cover usually rapidly expands, while the Arctic ice gradually
expands back towards its winter maximum.
Over simplified, a rapid expansion of
both, especially if early, can be a sign of a harsher than normal arriving
northern hemisphere winter. Perhaps more so in 2020-2021 as we’re in the low of
the ending sunspot cycle, which possibly also influenced this year’s record
Atlantic hurricane season.
Update: we seem to have started new sunspot cycle 25 this month,
though it’s unlikely to affect 2020-2021s coming winter.
Northern Eur-Asia turned snowy fast in
mid-October. The Arctic sea ice
expansion was slow, and from a very low level at the end of September, but with
the vastly expanded snow cover, sea ice formation sped up.
With the Laptev sea ice virtually back
to normal, at the end of the third week of November I’m starting to think that
it will likely be a normal to slightly warmer winter ahead for western Europe.
The failure of the Kara Sea ice to return
to normal, leads me to bet on a warmer western European winter ahead.
US National Ice
Center.
https://www.natice.noaa.gov
https://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif
Technology Update.
With events happening fast in the development of solar power and
graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported. Is converting
sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21st
century onwards.
Tree microbes could help crops
draw phosphorous from fertilized soil By Ben Coxworth November 26, 2020
Agricultural fertilizers typically contain
phosphorous, as it's essential to growing plants. Unfortunately, though, it can
become "locked" in the soil, and thus not available to crops. That
said, it turns out that the addition of a microbe could unlock it.
When applied
to crops as part of a fertilizer, phosphorous often reacts with minerals
already in the soil, forming chemical complexes with them. These complexes
can't be taken up by the plants' roots, so the phosphorous simply remains in
the dirt.
In order to
compensate for the problem, farmers will often apply excessive amounts of
fertilizer to the fields. Not only is this expensive, but much of that
fertilizer ends up running off into surrounding waterways, polluting them.
Led by Prof.
Sharon Doty, scientists at the University of Washington previously discovered
that root-dwelling microorganisms known as endophytes allow wild-growing trees
to pull phosphorous from the soil. This is true even of trees growing in rocky
soil alongside clear mountain-fed streams, where nutrients are in short supply.
In a more
recent study – conducted in collaboration with the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory – the researchers gathered endophytes from the roots of wild poplar
trees, and added them to soil in which phosphorous was locked within chemical
complexes.
It was found
that the microbes broke apart those complexes, making the phosphorous available
to poplar seedlings that had been planted in the dirt. Further testing
confirmed that the phosphorous had indeed been taken up by the plants, through
their roots.
The
scientists now hope that commercially grown endophytes could be mixed with the
soil amongst young plants, or even used to coat seeds prior to planting. Not
only could the microorganisms then keep freshly-applied phosphorous available
to the crops, but they could also free up phosphorous that was already locked
in the soil from previous growing seasons.
The endophyte strains used in the study have been licensed
to California-based company Intrinsyx Bio, with an eye toward
commercialization.
A paper on the research was recently published in the
journal Frontiers in Plant Science
Source: University of Washington
https://newatlas.com/science/endophytes-crops-fertilizer-phosphorous/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=467154dcfc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_11_27_09_19&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-467154dcfc-90625829
This weekend’s musical diversion. Vivaldi - Concerto for Two
Mandolins in G RV532 - Mov. 2-3/3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa8L2C9WK40
This weekend’s great chess game. All Hail Sir Knight, The
Uncapturable! || So vs Rajabov || Skilling Open Knockout (2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Y-gtWSBKQ
This weekend’s numbers problem.
British Mathematics Olympiad
1993 Round 1 Question 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hl75Pap6iY
In another telegram to Hitler upon the fall of Paris a
month later, Wilhelm stated, "Congratulations, you have won using my
troops." In a letter to his daughter Victoria Louise, Duchess of
Brunswick , he wrote triumphantly,
"Thus is the pernicious Entente
Cordiale of Uncle Edward
VII brought to nought." [24]
In a letter of 1940 to his sister Princess Margaret of Prussia ,
Wilhelm wrote: "The hand of God is creating a new world & working
miracles.... We are becoming the U.S. of Europe
under German leadership, a united European Continent." [20]
However, Wilhem's opinion of Hitler behind closed doors was much
less favourable. In a 1938 interview with Ken
magazine , he said of the dictator:
"There is a man alone, without family, without children,
without God...He builds legions but he doesn’t build a nation. A nation is
created by families, a religion, tradition: it is made up out of the hearts of
mothers, the wisdom of fathers, the joy and the exuberance of children. [Of
Germany under Hitler he says]...an all-swallowing State, disdainful of human
dignities and the ancient structure of our race, sets itself up in place of
everything else. And the man who, alone, incorporates in himself this whole
State, has neither a God to honour nor a dynasty to conserve, nor a past to
consult...
For a few months I was inclined to believe in National Socialism . I
thought of it as a necessary fever. And I was gratified to see that there were,
associated with it for a time, some of the wisest and most outstanding Germans.
But these, one by one, he has got rid of or even killed...He has left nothing
but a bunch of shirted gangsters...
This man could bring home victories to our people each year
without bringing them...glory...But of our Germany, which was a nation of poets
and musicians and artists and soldiers, he has made a nation of hysterics and
hermits, engulfed in a mob and led by a thousand liars or fanatics..." [25]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdication_of_Wilhelm_II
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