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Medicine The Almighty Buck

Russian Elite Given Experimental COVID-19 Vaccine Since April (bloomberg.com) 80

Posted by BeauHD from the preventative-measures dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Scores of Russia's business and political elite have been given early access to an experimental vaccine against Covid-19, according to people familiar with the effort, as the country races to be among the first to develop an inoculation. Top executives at companies including aluminum giant United Co. Rusal, as well as billionaire tycoons and government officials began getting shots developed by the state-run Gamaleya Institute in Moscow as early as April, the people said. They declined to be identified as the information isn't public.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who recovered from Covid-19 after being hospitalized with the virus in May, said he doesn't know the names of anyone who's received the institute's vaccine. Peskov's comments followed a Health Ministry statement that said only participants in Gamaleya's trials are currently eligible for the jabs. While the new shots are "safe" because they're based on proven vaccines for other diseases, their effectiveness has yet to be determined, according to Sergei Netesov, a former executive at Vector, a state-run virology center in Novosibirsk, Siberia, that's also working on an inoculation. "Those who take it do so at their own risk," Netesov said.
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Russian Elite Given Experimental COVID-19 Vaccine Since April More

Russian Elite Given Experimental COVID-19 Vaccine Since April

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  • The Russian Deep State (Score:5, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @08:06PM (#60320977)

    It's really natural to test it on these expendables.

  • does the same sort of thing then you are duped by the US propaganda machine

    • It's called a volunteer test population, and I bet that every major country is using high-level politicians as test subjects in this way. After all, the flesh-pressing and in-person meetings that inescapably go with politics makes them vulnerable to the disease.That way, when a vaccine is publicly announced and released, these people can blunt any local antivaxer sentiment by saying "Look, I have already taken it!"

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by olsmeister ( 1488789 )
        No politician is going to publicly announce that he/she was granted access to the vaccine well before the general population was. It would be political suicide. Have you seen the outcry about professional sports players getting easy and priority access to testing?

        • "I tested a possibly dangerous product three months ago so you didn't have to take first risk."
          Now imagine instead the same leader announcing: ""This vaccine was tested in randomly selected retirement homes first. Now it's safe enough for me to take."
          Which example is political suicide again?

          • Neither. The timeline when politicians were judged on their actions never arrived.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Trump has murdered more than a 100,000 with his incompetent approach to covid, his followers have barely blinked at it. I doubt either of those lines would have much effect on most politicians success or failure.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Trump announced that he was taking hydroxychloroquine before that was certified as safe or effective against COVID-19.

        • You haven't been paying attention. Some Democrats harshly criticized Trump for the supposedly rash decision to try hydroxychloroquine. Not the same thing, but an indication that no action is free from unjustified outrage.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        It's called paying attention to what is going on. The Russian medical services just looked at the statistics globally and noted Japan and Australia did the best and looked for commonality and found the TB inoculation to the difference, the wide use of it. So logically they called in all those people and gave them a TB inoculation their first or a booster. So an experimental drug in a manner of speaking as in experimental in it's use to combat corona virus but it seemed to work in Australia and Japan, and no

        • Like already mentioned, if the BCG vaccine works against the coronavirus, why was France hit so bad?

      • the flesh-pressing and in-person meetings that inescapably go with politics makes them vulnerable to the disease.

        The same is true for every medical worker, every grocery worker and every social worker. Do we get to vote on whether we want to protect them or politicians? Because I at least know what group of people I'd want to protected and which group I could well do without, mostly because there is hardly a shortage of replacement material.

    • [citation needed]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      This is really quite insane. It may not only not work, it may prevent an eventual better vaccine to work on those people.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khchung ( 462899 )

      does the same sort of thing then you are duped by the US propaganda machine

      Exactly. At the time when high risk medical staff could not get tested, the rich and famous in the US without any symptoms could be tested simply because they were "worried".

      How do you think the vaccine would be distributed in the US when it became available?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        How do you think the vaccine would be distributed in the US when it became available?

        With your healthcare system?

        The first batch would cost 100,000 US$ per dose. You know, to "recoup the R&D costs". There would be protests, but there are enough people for whom that's play money and they would sell out. Then, after some delay, the pharma company would "give in to the demands" and lower the price to 10k. There would be more protests, but a new group of people who can afford that would buy it up quickly. A few more steps like that and in the end you can buy the vaccine for $200 or somethin

        • You, too, have not been paying attention. The US government has already bough hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines that haven't even been accepted yet. Public health programs will administer them cheaply if they turn out to be effective.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Tom ( 822 )

            Right. You believe that. Mod parent up +5 Funny.

            I'll be very, very surprised if the US starts to vaccinate its people for free. We will see who of us was right. I'm quite sure that billionaires will all be done before the first poor person (who isn't a test subject) gets the shots.

    • Frankly, if I were rich and powerful, I would NOT be a guinea pig for a new drug (there's a good reason why the overwhelming majority of new drugs never get past the testing phase...). Much easier to just stay home till the problem goes away....

    • You're crazy! There's simply no way the US would ever experiment unethically [atomicheritage.org] on its citizens. It's just unthinkable...

    • Am I wrong or is the communist that says that there is no elite? USA propaganda was never about that. It's about anyone can be elite if work hard.

  • Falling out of windows

    Foaming at the mouth, and attempting to bite other Russian Elite

  • Cholesterol drug could reduce coronavirus symptoms to level of common cold, study claims

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/... [thesun.co.uk]

    -=-=-=

    Exercise May Protect Against Deadly COVID-19 Complication, Research Suggests

    https://news.virginia.edu/cont... [virginia.edu]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Cholesterol drug could reduce coronavirus symptoms to level of common cold, study claims

      https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/... [thesun.co.uk]

      -=-=-=

      Signs that this probably won't pan out:

      • Not peer reviewed
      • Published only in a paywalled journal, so most people can't look into the methodology
      • Tests performed only in vitro [xkcd.com]

      I mean it might work, but I'd be willing to bet that if I paywalled a paper and wrote up a similar abstract and sent out the right press releases, I could convince a whole lot of people that coronavirus could be cured with aspartame.

      Let me know when it has actually been tested in vivo, with a paper published in an open access journal. :-)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Tests performed only in vitro [xkcd.com]

        So potentially like the Hydroxychloroquine. Works well in vitro, but concentration in the lungs never reached the levels needed to be effective. Estimations of needed dosage show that dosage is unfortunately fatal to the patient.

        On the other side, anything that works in vitro is worth looking at closer. Some stuff may have better presence in the lungs (or higher non-lethal dosage limits) and some stuff may lead to other ideas what could work.

        • So potentially like the Hydroxychloroquine. Works well in vitro

          Not human in vitro, monkey kidney and fetal bovine serum [oup.com].

          The Vero cells were derived from the African green monkey kidney and were grown in Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM; Sigma Aldrich, Boston, MA) supplemented with 5% fetal bovine serum (HyClone, Logan, UT).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            You sure? I though this had been done with human tissue cultures as well by now. But the thing is that it does not reach the lungs in humans in sufficient quantity. So it does not really matter whether it works in vitro for human tissue or just other tissue.

        • It's claimed to work by reducing fat in the lungs. If there's less fat in the body, most likely there will be less in the lungs. Thus the drug doesn't have to have high concentration in the lungs in order to have a fair chance of working.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Signs that this probably won't pan out

        But The Sun says they tested it on bigfoot and flying saucer pilots.

    • Exercise? Oh my god, the cure is worse than the disease!

  • Scores of Russia's business and political elite have been given early access to an experimental vaccine against Covid-19

    BOY this sure sounds enticing if you just happened to be the perpetual leader. Have someone you don't like? Give them the "special" water vaccine and "Oh, gee, it must not have worked for you. Good luck with that cough."

    If they're being a pain RIGHT NOW, then just feed them poison and say "You must have been allergic to the vaccine; too bad it's experimental. We'll get right to work on that."

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      the perpetual leader. Have someone you don't like? Give them the "special" [medicine] and "Oh, gee, it must not have worked for you. Good luck with that cough."

      Our leader does it to himself.

      • the perpetual leader. Have someone you don't like? Give them the "special" [medicine] and "Oh, gee, it must not have worked for you. Good luck with that cough."

        Our leader does it to himself.

        With injections of Lysol.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      BOY this sure sounds enticing if you just happened to be the perpetual leader. Have someone you don't like? Give them the "special" water vaccine and "Oh, gee, it must not have worked for you. Good luck with that cough."

      You seem to think that it's some kind of SciFi "the Emperor of Humanity" kind of state. It's not. While Putin has been in power for a very long time, the country is too big and varied and especially the Oligarchs, military and other players too suspicious and independent to work like that.

      Don't forget the recent Russian history. After the USSR fell apart, there was a period of open warfare on the streets. Go to cemetries and you can find scores of gravestones with people in their 20s and 30s who all died vi

  • It would seem that the Russian elites love the Russian people so tenderly that they are offering themselves as guinea pigs. Pig is the word all right.

  • That the elite would this easily volunteer as test candidates seems a bit funny. It'd be quite uncharacteristic if they've all selflessly participated.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It actually sounds like nonsense or an urban myth. Sure, they say "no negative effects", but an ineffective vaccine could still interfere with the immune response and make a later available better vaccine ineffective or risky for these people. Vaccines are tricky.

    • possibly just more rumour or anti elite sentiment. But I could actually see many of the elite in US/UK/Russia and everywhere happily volunteering, many are in what would be classed as the high risk category (old, unfit, meeting a lot of people all the time), If you are in the US or Russia you would probably happily take the chance on the drug as you are already a very high probability of getting covid and dying as both countries have completely lost control of covid (Russia though doesn't admit it publicly)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        both countries have completely lost control of covid (Russia though doesn't admit it publicly).

        Published numbers, such as those at https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info] see a lot of infections in Russia, but the numbers are actually pretty good given the size of the country. By population, a lot of European countries are worse, and the new daily cases are dropping (though slowly).

        What is your source for the information that Russia has "completely lost control of covid" ?

        I'm interested because I have relatives in Russia. They're out of the way in one of those places with a population density of 2 per squa

        • When you have relatives then you're better off asking them and not worldometer. We already know that each country measures differently, some don't count their dead and some deliberately withhold information not to cause panic and anger among the population.

          Just seeing how 1st world countries have handled it should give you an idea how bad it must be in countries where many people don't have access to Internet, TV reception and even electricity can be spotty. Then you have the older generations, who are noto

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Tom ( 822 )

            When you have relatives then you're better off asking them and not worldometer.

            You didn't read my posting or you would've seen that I have asked them already. But Russia is a huge country and they only see the national media and their immediate surroundings.

            Just seeing how

            In other words, you don't have any actual sources, you're just making stuff up from a general impression.

            • I did read your post, but you left it open if you actually had talked to them. And yes, nobody has good sources. That includes you, too. You're making stuff up as well, so stop demanding what you cannot produce either. We're all in the same boat here.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Tom ( 822 )

                And yes, nobody has good sources. That includes you, too.

                Which is why I'm asking questions, you know?

                • No, that's not why you're asking. You're asking, because you don't like the answers you're finding here. Or perhaps you're too stupid to see them. You will know ...

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Tom ( 822 )

                    Or perhaps you're too stupid

                    I'm not American, so that option is out. :-)

    • I suspect "elite" is a very flexible term here. The real powers are all busy self-isolating in their own little support bubbles. They never mixed with the ordinary folk anyway, and now they've got an excuse to avoid doing it ever again. The "elite" here are people who think they're big and important, but aren't. Essentially, the PHBs of society.

      The question is... is this real, or is it a way to test various experimental drugs? Did someone get an experimental mind-control drug, or an experimental soil-yourse

  • In chess ... (Score:3)

    by tiananmen tank man ( 979067 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @08:55PM (#60321091)

    In chess, the pawns go first.

  • Got a cure for Coranavirus, but you are stuck in Russia.

  • In Soviet Russia the COVID vaccine experiments on you! I couldn't resist....

  • Finally, the rich as guinea pigs, instead of the poor. After all, we know these take a year and a half to be proven safe, much less effective.

    And that's worth a million lives, right? Just the safe part?

    • Waiting a year and a half has it's own risks. I think I'd take it if it were offered to me, and if I were 70+ it would be a no-brainer.

      • I'm 70+. I'm going to wait at least 6 months after a vaccine is available. Then, if vaccinated people aren't dropping like flies, I'll consider it.

        A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once.. -- Shakespeare

  • And kids these days are trying to peddle this bs...

  • We may have had a safe and effective COVID vaccine since March. But the trick is proving it safe and effective. There's no guarantee that what these powerful Russians received is either.

    China has taken a somewhat similar tack with approving a vaccine for their military only.

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