One of my instrument flying students recently traveled back to his native Russia and got the Sputnik V vaccine (his wife had it too and the result was two days of fever for her, no significant negative effect for him). Although the U.S.-approved Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are supposedly quite effective, they’re also brand new technology that has never previously been tried in humans (see, from 2018 Nature, “mRNA vaccines — a new era in vaccinology”).
What about the idea of traveling to a country where a vaccine based on more conventional adenovirus technology is available? In addition to the Russian vaccine, the Oxford/AstraZeneca product meets this definition (explanation of function in NYT).
Why not take a trip to a Mexican beach resort, for example, and pay a private clinic for a dose of the AstraZeneca product? (produced and/or packaged in Mexico) Then go back a month or two later for some more poolside margaritas, a stop at a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the second dose?
(Why not get one of these vaccines here in the U.S.? The FDA might not approve it before 100 percent of Americans are infected (roughly half are already if we use the 8X multiplier that the CDC suggests). Even if the FDA does approve it, the centrally planned distribution strategy might make a adenovirus-based vaccine impossible to obtain as a practical matter.)
Readers: Which would you rather have? A leading-edge mRNA vaccine or a slightly-more-conventional adenovirus vaccine? (or no vaccine at all?)
[A medical school professor friend: “The adenovirus vaccine is more likely to have a known side effect than the mRNA vaccine. The mRNA is much more likely to have an unknown side effect.” Why did he prefer? “I don’t want to feel bad for a day or two and the probability of a significant negative effect from the mRNA vaccine is small, so I’d rather have the mRNA vaccine. In reality, it doesn’t matter because so many Americans will have been immunized by a COVID infection by the time I get my vaccine that my actual protection will come from herd immunity.” He does work in a hospital, but seldom sees patients and therefore is not likely to get a vaccine before March.]
JNJ vaccine is single-shot adenovirus based with 1 billion doses planned this year.
EUA expected in February.
https://www.kcentv.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/johnson-johnsons-single-dose-vaccine-next-to-seek-emergency-use-authorization/285-5aec885b-1d5f-4a9e-a00e-0f5da893035c
Seems like a smart idea actually. Another idea is to hang around a hospital or pharmacy where they’re doing a bunch of vaccinations and get any leftovers similar to a homeless person looking for handouts outside the kitchen of a restaurant. https://getfreshnews.com/2021/01/05/young-healthy-people-have-figured-out-a-loophole-to-get-the-covid-19-vaccine-without-skipping-the-line/
I’m not planning on getting it because I’m in the low-risk group, it’s untested, and in any event if there is herd immunity, why bother? As I get older, most likely I’ll get it then.
P.S. It looks like posts in RSS feed are dated by creation date, and not by publication date. This is really annoying, since they appear out of order.
SK: That’s a strange WordPress bug. Was it always like that? There are no code tweaks here.
Philip, once you switched hosting, it started to behave like this. I use NewsBlur as RSS reader, and articles appear out of order. Maybe this is NewsBlur bug, but I don’t see it on other feeds.