Good News Thread - part 2

[KitKatastrophe]

Thank you to those who have contributed to the good news thread over the past few weeks. We are at 40 pages so here is a new one to continue sharing good news stories :)

@dollychopss

Did anyone see Vallance today ? He seems optimistic

Oh no...missed it. Tbh I do avoid as make me feel quite anxious. What did he say?

I vaguely heard it as was working alongside but I agree he seemed to be quite certain a vaccine was coming. I wasn’t listening intently and made a mental note to go back and listen tomorrow.

Sir Patrick Vallance struck an unusually positive note in today’s press conference, citing the promising progress of vaccine development allowing the country to return to normal. He began by saying…

“I remain of the view that wider spread use of the vaccine isn’t going to be until Spring or so next year, by the time we get enough doses and understanding.”

However, the Chief Scientific Officer went on to say that:

“We may get a few doses this side of Christmas, maybe something could happen”

Vallance said the realistic timeframe is the spring but there is “good progress” on the vaccines, saying of the rate of development that “it is remarkable”

Source: order-order.com/2020/10/22/vallance-vaccine-doses-could-come-this-side-of-christmas/

Oh that’s great sebw, thanks for that news update

Signs that the infection rates might be stabilising news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-there-are-signs-covid-19-epidemic-is-slowing-but-its-too-early-to-be-confident-12111443

No problem @Chickenandrice

I love this thread and appreciate everyone sharing their snippets

Daily mail have produced a really optimistic article saying that the oxford vaccine works perfectly and generates an immune response which fights off the virus. I am not sure how they know this exactly. But there seems to be a lot of optimism that the vaccine will be ready by the end of this year.

I’ve just read that article re. the vaccine and logged on assume Mumsnet would be having a bloody party!!! How come there’s no threads about it? Was the article nonsense?

The study results from Bristol that have been reported in the Mail are in vitro demonstrating that the vaccine does what it should at a cellular level. This isn’t the same thing as demonstrating that it works clinically but is all good evidence pointing in the right direction

Ime the Mail tends to over egg the pudding with either good or bad news. This is good news but it’s not quite as ‘throw a party, covid is over’ good as they seem to be implying. It’s just another reason to be optimistic about the 3rd stage trial results which are expected some time in November.

I can accept muted food news and completely agree with the media. It’s all click bait, super good and gravely bad.

Oxford claimed early on that a lot of people were already immune and there wouldnt be a second wave. It was comprehensively rubbished by other scientists at the time and very rapidly disproved. That's the one I most remember, stopped listening to them much.

However came here to post this - a vaccine will possibly start becoming available in December www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-could-be-ready-by-december/2214923/

and scientists saying the virus may be becoming less virulent www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.20.347021v1 (although its a preprint and not peer reviewed)

and there is evidence that masks will protect you to some extent if worn properly in.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-japan-masks-idINKBN2770DX

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/21/data-intensive-care-units-shows-second-wave-wont-deadly-first/

If you can access it. If not, in summary, in this second wave, much more likely to survive, few people needing ICU, and better general outcomes. Also time spent in hospital has halved, which means patient turnover is quicker, and more beds available, which in turn further improves outcomes.

I think saying ‘Oxford claimed’ is a bit unfair on the rest of a very big university with a number of distinct institutions doing completely different things.
The team working on the vaccine for instance have nothing to do with the epidemiologist making the herd immunity claim.

[quote alreadytaken]Oxford claimed early on that a lot of people were already immune and there wouldnt be a second wave. It was comprehensively rubbished by other scientists at the time and very rapidly disproved. That's the one I most remember, stopped listening to them much.

However came here to post this - a vaccine will possibly start becoming available in December www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-could-be-ready-by-december/2214923/

and scientists saying the virus may be becoming less virulent www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.20.347021v1 (although its a preprint and not peer reviewed)

and there is evidence that masks will protect you to some extent if worn properly in.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-japan-masks-idINKBN2770DX[/quote]
Are you talking about Professor Sunetra Gupta? If so, I wouldn't have thought her views are representative of Oxford University as a whole. She seems to have taken some somewhat of a denialist stance and is one of the people who signed the Great Barrington Declaration. It's hard to imagine that the scientists working on the vaccine would agree with her.

[quote alreadytaken]Oxford claimed early on that a lot of people were already immune and there wouldnt be a second wave. It was comprehensively rubbished by other scientists at the time and very rapidly disproved. That's the one I most remember, stopped listening to them much.

However came here to post this - a vaccine will possibly start becoming available in December www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-could-be-ready-by-december/2214923/

and scientists saying the virus may be becoming less virulent www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.20.347021v1 (although its a preprint and not peer reviewed)

and there is evidence that masks will protect you to some extent if worn properly in.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-japan-masks-idINKBN2770DX[/quote]
Interesting about the virus possibly becoming less virulent though. That's the first time I have seen this claimed in what is, I assume at least, a reputable scientific journal.

It’s been hypothesised for some time. Certainly it could be part of the reason for falling deaths rates (on top of other factors).

This is a positive article in the Irish Times speaking to Professor Devi Sridhar. The last time I read her views she was saying she thought things wouldn't get back to normal until 2023, but here she is saying that, even though the winter will be brutal, things should start looking different by March 2021. So a bit more optimistic maybe and hopefully correct in this latter assessment.

www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/reasons-to-believe-covid-19-pandemic-will-ease-next-spring-says-health-expert-1.4388702

Nice one, BlueBlancmange.

Can you remember what her previous reasons were for saying 2023? Was she just not anticipating the speed at which science could go with a following wind and unlimited budget?

So many scientists saying by March it will look different. And now it seems to have improved enough to say mass vaccination by March - which presumably means vulnerable by Feb? Nhs workers jan? So I’m feeling very optimistic we will have news before Christmas .

So I found this amongst various things in the rolling news coverage on Sky News app. It's about "mini lungs" which scientists have developed in the lab to mimic what Covid does to lungs and what they can derive from this knowledge. Here's a screenshot:-

Scientists are well clever aren't they?

www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/20/925441975/studies-point-to-big-drop-in-covid-19-death-rates?t=1603533688627

Mortality rates have dropped in UK and US by around 18% across all ages, races and underlying conditions due to better treatment

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

Nice one, BlueBlancmange.

Can you remember what her previous reasons were for saying 2023? Was she just not anticipating the speed at which science could go with a following wind and unlimited budget?

This is the article posted by tobee in the original good news thread. I don't think Sridhar makes it very clear why she was saying this, possibly to do with availability and effectiveness of the vaccine. Oh and she said 2024, maybe 2023

apple.news/AtJkxuWzFQ-yEfw2O3n5QtA

15 minute saliva tests could be in use by Christmas

apple.news/A3zs2kesGROu6nMlBZFlQ0Q