Posted on 09/10/2014 3:49:02 PM PDT by Qiviut
Last week, as experts assembled at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva to discuss the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, there was a glaring absence in the public discourse: an accurate assessment of the U.S. government’s capacity to produce ZMapp, one of the experimental drugs under discussion for speeded approval. The drug, a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies that has now been used in the treatment of at least seven Ebola patients, five of whom survived, has the potential to be an exceptional therapy against the virus. But the world’s supply is currently exhausted, and production of even several dozen additional doses of the drug remains months away.
But the U.S. government could in fact produce an extraordinary amount of the drug in a relatively short timeframe. A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program, launched in 2006 and led by Michael Callahan, an infectious disease doctor affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital, wildly accelerated the rate at which vaccines and monoclonal antibodies like ZMapp can be produced. Callahan’s project was known as AMP, for Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals, and, later, as Blue Angel. It pitted small biotech firms against one another, each competing to produce therapeutic agents in creative and relatively untested ways ....... Tobacco plants eventually proved to be the most effective means of production.
The president of one of the premier AMP/Blue Angel platforms, speaking on the condition of anonymity last week, told me that his firm could produce tens of thousands of doses of ZMapp within months and 3 million doses of the ZMapp within a year.
Yet, five months into the outbreak, the sort of political will required for such aggressive intervention still remains entirely absent in the leadership of the world’s most affluent states, not least of which, within the U.S. government.
(Excerpt) Read more at newrepublic.com ...
*ping*
So let's take the (very) small sample as representative.
With the vaccine, two out of seven die.
That's a 28% fatality rate.
What does the vaccine do as far as someone's ability to shed live virus?
...keeping in mind that the fatality rate for the infamous 1918 influenza was around 5%...
bttt
“With the vaccine, two out of seven die.
That’s a 28% fatality rate.”
Meaningless comment without factoring in the severity or length of time of the infection.
The plutocrats don’t want the meek to inherit the earth.
From the article, it sounds like a no-brainer but then we are dealing with Obama. He’s supposed to be concerned about Africa but . . .
It’s in our enlightened self interest to take care of this if we can. The costs of Ebola coming here would be astronomic.
My understanding is that it was 10% to 20% and that 3% to 6% of the world's population died. 50 to 100 million people, 3 to 6 times the number that died in the war.
My dad told me a story of watching his dad and uncles carry 6 bodies, the entire family, out of the house next door. He was 7.
This vaccine is also being given to people who already have the disease. It’s likely to be far more effective given as a preventative.
Wonder how long it would be before the LIHOP/MIHOP
meme would be tossed around? Even were we to make it
available to everyone, there would be some who would
use it to call our development of it into question.
It seems like we might have our first Ebola patient ever in Australia this morning. I am really for quarantining until the outbreak is over - I feel sorry for the countries involved but no reason to bring it here - especially if we go into an unprecedented 4th wave - we are in previously uncharted territory already!
That a given. We’re guilty regardless. If we do everything we can to help here, it’ll still be our greed that’s pushing us and someone else will get the credit. And that’ll just be the White House opinion, others will be more strident.
Of to the side, I’m wondering if Obama’s dislike and distrust of business and the military is behind his foot dragging.
And 35 out of 35 monkeys were cured. It may have to do with how far along the disease was in the individual.
It would undo untold spending and opinion shaping to demonize tobacco growing in this country. Can’t have that.
Barak Obama has a prevaricating mind, bold decisive
actions are not his style, every action must be weighed politically before being initiated, as a consequence
he behind the OODA curve in every thing he does.
You'd think he'd be more publicly condemning of Boko Haram. There are some little-reported on Special Forces activities in Africa, but we don't hear of much success in Nigeria. BH seems to be the ISIS of Africa.
the average amount of time in order to bring a new discovery molecule through all three or four FDA approval stages is 11 years and the average budget to do that is 1.1 billion dollars.
the problem is legal and regulatory not necessarily technical.
Nothing wrt shedding. But it roughly doubles survivability if administered LATE. Prob much better if administered early.
/based on what I’ve read, YMMV
Yah, but you can't factor those things in (in any significant fashion, with any real degree of confidence) based on such a small sample.
In the meantime, if the vaccine leaves transmissibility untouched, but instills a false sense of confidence among those who will nonetheless shed infections material...
They believe that nothing can ever harm them. Their entire life experience reinforces that belief. They are wrong.
The elites will continue to make stupid and high-risk decisions until they are swept away by the consequences of those decisions. Perhaps their successors will be a bit smarter.
The rest of us will simply need to dodge the splatter.
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