BBC
A lot is written about COVID 19 but these 3 stories seem
particularly relevant and interesting.
The 1st one is good news: Oxford University claims to have found a vaccine
that works, which could be ready in September 2020. It has been tested on
monkeys already, and successfully so.
The 2nd one is about the issue of immunity, which is on everyone's mind: the
article explains why this question is complex.
The 3rd one is about New Zealand, a fellow Commonwealth country and an
English-speaking island nation, just like Britain: New Zealand currently has
1,124 confirmed cases and 19 deaths out of a
population of around five million people. Its new cases have stayed in
the single digits for several days, leading the government to say that the
virus was effectively eliminated.
The population of the UK is about 65 million people: if you
multiply the NZ figures by 10 (5m X 10 = 50 m), you would have 190 dead. Right
now, in Britain, it is >20,000. Including deaths in care homes and other
unrecorded deaths, it is probably closer to 28,000, perhaps as high as
35,000.
The article explains what NZ did right, which shows what the UK
did wrong. All the rest is waffle and obfuscation. It is all very well having a
minute's silence for all the medical staff who have died; the point is, they
should never have died in the first place.
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Could there be millions of doses of a Covid-19 vaccine available
by September?
It seems significantly earlier than we had been cautioned to
expect, but the Oxford University's Jenner Insititute believes it has produced
an effective vaccine, and plans to carry out clinical tests on 6,000 people
before the end of May.
The Jenner vaccine was tested on six rhesus macaque monkeys at the
US National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana last
month, according to the New York Times.
The monkeys were exposed to high doses of the virus, and all six
remained healthy 28 days later. Monkeys without the vaccine fell sick,
according to the report.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which
is funding nine different coronavirus vaccine projects, is hopeful a vaccine
could be ready this year, Bloomberg reports.
CEPI
had initially envisaged a later timescale because it had not taken factors into
account such as companies working together.
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Can you catch
coronavirus again? Why are some people sicker than others? Will it come back
every winter? Will a vaccine work? Could immunity passports get some of us
back to work? How do we manage ...
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52450978
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Coffee and fast food
seemed to be the first thing on the mind of New Zealanders as the country
emerged from almost five weeks of strict lockdown. The alert level has
shifted to level three ...
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