Don’t throw out your masks (NYT)

by philg

“An Even Deadlier Pandemic Could Soon Be Here” (New York Times, today):

Bird flu — known more formally as avian influenza — has long hovered on the horizons of scientists’ fears. This pathogen, especially the H5N1 strain, hasn’t often infected humans, but when it has, 56 percent of those known to have contracted it have died. Its inability to spread easily, if at all, from one person to another has kept it from causing a pandemic.

But things are changing. The virus, which has long caused outbreaks among poultry, is infecting more and more migratory birds, allowing it to spread more widely, even to various mammals, raising the risk that a new variant could spread to and among people.

The U.S. government has a small H5N1 vaccine stockpile, but it would be nowhere near enough if a serious outbreak occurred. The current plan is to mass-produce them if and when such an outbreak occurs, based on the particular variant involved.

There are several problems, though, with this approach even under the best-case scenarios. Producing hundreds of millions of doses of a new vaccine could take six months or more.

Worryingly, all but one of the approved vaccines are produced by incubating each dose in an egg. The U.S. government keeps hundreds of thousands of chickens in secret farms with bodyguards. (It’s true!) But the bodyguards are presumably there to fend off terror attacks, not a virus. Relying on chickens to produce vaccines against a virus that has a 90 percent to 100 percent fatality rate among poultry has the makings of the most unfunny which-came-first, the-chicken-or-the-egg riddle.

Will no one rid us of this turbulent virus? (source) It’s Pfizer and Moderna to the rescue:

The mRNA-based platforms used to make two of the Covid vaccines also don’t depend on eggs. Scott Hensley, an influenza expert at the University of Pennsylvania, told me that those vaccines can be mass-produced faster, in as little as three months. There are currently no approved mRNA vaccines for influenza, but efforts to make one should be expedited.

The public, of course, doesn’t want to hear about another virus, and Congress isn’t even willing to keep funding efforts against the current one.

If you spend $20 trillion fighting Virus A your ability to grapple with other health issues, including Virus B, is impaired? Who knew?

13 thoughts on “Don’t throw out your masks (NYT)”

  1. > Worryingly, all but one of the approved vaccines are produced by incubating each dose in an egg.

    I seem to recall that vaccines produced with that method actually worked. Why is it worrisome?

    > [mRNA] vaccines can be mass-produced faster, in as little as three months.

    Oh really? Operation warp speed started in April 2020, in April 2021 the mRNA shot was still rationed for priority groups.

  2. Too bad the world governments and regulatory bodies are so inept and so thoroughly corrupted that mRNA was mandated and paid for. Had UVC technology been mandated instead, none of us would ever worry about current or future respiratory pandemics and cost of implementation would be a negligible fraction of the trillions spent and lost due to lockdowns etc. The general public is so brainwashed by “UV causes cancer”, that very few know the cancer risk under c-band UV is negligible (even 265nm UVC is quite safe, <0.3% cancer risk with 20-year exposure of 8-hour daily exposure at a dosage that can kill airborne SARS-2 about 10 times over). I'd bet the death rate from UVC would be a negligible fraction of that caused by the mRNA vaccines also. So disgusted.

    • Soviet medicine used UVC in throat/mouth to treat respiratory ilnesses, and small UVC mercury lamps were sold for treatment at home.

      Didn’t do much.

      The reality is, you need pretty intense UV to actually achieve meanigful reduction of virions. If it does not ionize oxygen, it is too weak. (You can smell it… oxygen ions created by the leaking higher-frequemcy UV recombine to create ozone.)

    • No, 265nm light sits at a local electromagnetic absorption peak for DNA and RNA structures so it’s extremely efficient in breaking the bonds. Also 265nm photons have insufficient energy to generate ozone- you only start appreciable O3 generation at below 240nm wavelengths.
      NIST in late last year published a special issue with summaries of various experiments with UVC inactivation of SARS2 on surfaces and the dosage for 99.9% kill is around 3mJ/cm2. If airborne, the dosage requirement would be much less as past dosage comparison experiments for airborne/surface flu viruses had shown. This is easy to understand as a viral particle can be irradiated from more directions when airborne. SARS 2 is easy to kill by UVC due to its small RNA structure.

    • To Averros: 265nm light sits at a local electromagnetic absorption peak for DNA and RNA structures so it’s extremely efficient in breaking the bonds. Also 265nm photons have insufficient energy to generate ozone- you only start appreciable O3 generation at below 240nm wavelengths.
      NIST in late last year published a special issue with summaries of various experiments with UVC inactivation of SARS2 on surfaces and the dosage for 99.9% kill is around 3mJ/cm2. If airborne, the dosage requirement would be much less as past dosage comparison experiments for airborne/surface flu viruses had shown. This is easy to understand as a viral particle can be irradiated from more directions when airborne. SARS 2 is easy to kill by UVC due to its small RNA structure.

  3. Frightening. Where is the world headed. Your information isn’t encouraging So far the C19 vaccine has worked for me, and I still wear mask n public places

  7. At least one NYT writer has a sense of humor: “avian influenza has long hovered on the horizons of scientists’ fears.”

    Sometimes it perches on the laboratory windowsill and croaks ‘nevermore.’

  8. Also, there are more and more studies on actual dangers of mRNA vaccines. I wouldn’t rush to use new mRNA vaccine unless absolutely necessary.

  9. I’m afraid that if this shit will keep going on the next epidemic will be epidemic of lead poisoning. By fast moving lead.

  10. 1. I was talking about the fact that common UV sources are not monochromatic and filters do NOT keep all ionizing radiation out. A typical 265nm LED will emit about 1% of its power at 240nm and shorter. (How do I know that… I do have things like Wood’s glass* in my workshop, LOL).

    2. There’s a world of difference between the lab tests in which the sample is irradiated evenly in a controlled manner and the real world which is full of shadows and air currents and droplets which internally refract.

    And of course cancer is not the only problem with UVC… check what it does to the eyes.

    I’d say in practice good ventilation works better than UV sanitizing and has other health benefits (such as reduction of indoor allergens, PMs, and VOCs). But MUH GREEN ENERGY SANDARDS!

    * modern UV bandpass filters are actually not that, but the name is customary.

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