Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

I didn't think about it until yesterday, but I'm technically a health-care worker. I'll still wait until the real ones have theirs, though.

 

I thought that the new RNA based vaccines required extreme low temps, or are you saying that the new freezer containers do this?

 

Gillibrand: Infrastructure for COVID Vaccine Storage Needed

 

It requires extremely low temperatures for long-term storage. It goes bad quicker at lesser temperatures, but not immediately.

The plan is to ship it in specially designed boxes packed with dry ice. They've done practice runs and everything seems to hold up on the larger scale. The biggest hurdle at the moment seems to be what to do about rural areas. The shipping boxes run 10,000 doses, and they're using vials that hold 10 doses each. But some podunk nowheresville may not be able to use the full 10 per day.

 

Why Does Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine Need To Be Kept Colder Than Antarctica?

"Right now, Pfizer says its vaccine needs to be kept at minus 70 degrees Celsius and can last in a specialty freezer for up to six months. The specialty shippers can hold up to five "pizza box" trays of vials and be refreshed with dry ice every five days for up to 15 days to keep the vaccine at the right frozen temperature.

Even that presents challenges, though — a Pfizer scientist told a CDC advisory council in August that it's not supposed to be opened more than twice a day and needs to be closed within one minute of opening. Once it's thawed, the vaccine can be refrigerated for five days.

Moderna says its vaccine candidate is stable at regular freezer temperature — minus 20 degrees Celsius — for up to six months, and after thawing it can last in the refrigerator for 30 days. It can also be kept at room temperature for up to 12 hours. This, explains Kristensen, is useful for health care workers in the field, "because now the vaccine doesn't need to go in and out of the refrigerator each time it's administered."

 

So basically, once you remove it from the super-duper-freezers for shipping, it needs to be used within about a week. That's not ideal, but it's definitely an overcome-able logistical hurdle.

 

Best news I've heard all day.

 

Keep in mind when I say "I think we can have things normal-ish by spring" that it's only partially because of the vaccine and partially because jesus fuck it is going to be everywhere for the next six weeks and a huge percentage of the population is going to get it.

So it's may be an overly ambitious hope, but it's also a very dark one.

 

And even a .5% mortality rate of a huge percentage of the population is a lot of dead people.

 

My state is run by pinheads.

 

If anyone feels the need with the spike happening around us, W.W. Grainger, the industrial supply company, has full N-95 masks at forty dollars and change for a box of twenty.

 

Why do they need to ship to rural areas until the vast majority of urban areas are inoculated? Seems to me the greatest threat to safety is where the most people live.