COVID Vaccine (2)

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Cap'n Jack said:
I agree with most of this. But I thought dry ice was cold enough for the Pfizer and Moderna products? To some degree, the ability to use dry ice makes things easier.
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Having been an Ops side engineer for almost three decades, I’m not kidding when I say my immediate relation to that was questions:

- How much dry ice per mile traveled/expected timeframes
- Are we forced to use special size-specific packaging?
- How big can we go and how many packages before we can’t do this by air? (Hazardous materials)
- How much and how often can our supplier deliver?
- Where are we going to store it while we package it up?

Argggggh. The list goes on and on in my head. Doesn’t even cover tracking, inventory, whether or not the styrofoam plant can even keep up on the boxes, multiple shipper tracking numbers...

These companies have some of this. The question is whether it was designed to massively SCALE. Likely not.

I don’t even want to think about what the internal conference calls sound like right now.
 
steingar said:
Difference is the icebox couldn't kill you if kept in a small room. Had a student pass out from the CO2 from dry ice kept in a cold room.
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Bah! You just added “safety” to my engineering brain list! LOL.

(The air shipment one only touched on that. It’s way bigger.)
 
denverpilot said:
Having been an Ops side engineer for almost three decades, I’m not kidding when I say my immediate relation to that was questions:

- How much dry ice per mile traveled/expected timeframes
- Are we forced to use special size-specific packaging?
- How big can we go and how many packages before we can’t do this by air? (Hazardous materials)
- How much and how often can our supplier deliver?
- Where are we going to store it while we package it up?

Argggggh. The list goes on and on in my head. Doesn’t even cover tracking, inventory, whether or not the styrofoam plant can even keep up on the boxes, multiple shipper tracking numbers...

These companies have some of this. The question is whether it was designed to massively SCALE. Likely not.

I don’t even want to think about what the internal conference calls sound like right now.
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As you state, the companies involved have at least some of this taken care of

As for the air part, I posted at least twice, once recently in this thread, that United Airlines has a waiver to carry more dry ice than normally allowed; Pfizer has chartered with UAL for some of the delivery. Here's another citation, which mentions Delta Airlines too-https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-airlines-dry-ice-in-vaccine-transport-demands-special-attention-11607370720

Dry ice can be made as needed from liquid CO2, and this is stored under fairly a moderate pressure of 5 atmospheres (about 75 PSI) at room temperature. If you have a CO2 fire extinguisher someplace, you also have liquid CO2. When I need a small amount of dry ice, I'll make it from a tank that I have in the lab. I'll buy blocks or pellets if I need more.
Shipping medicines under dry ice is common now, although not at the scale we may need for several months. The packaging is standardized- here's one example: https://www.acpco2.com/en/chemical-industry/dry-ice-transporting-pharmaceutical-products

As for the tracking & inventory, pharmaceutical companies do that very well now, even for OTC medicines. Pfizer reportedly has an GPS/temperature sensor to track that a shipment hasn't "lost it's cool", and the location where that may have happened.

A good management team plans for success. This means while they were developing the vaccine, and during clinical trials, they were hopefully working out these details during this time and maybe testing them.

The Moderna vaccine can be stored for a month at around 4 degrees, which should ease things a bit. I suspect a vaccine will be in someone's arm in far less than a month of being placed in a vial.

Many of your concerns are valid, some less so. Carbon-dioxide can be diverted from making beer or soda, for example.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Many of your concerns are valid, some less so. Carbon-dioxide can be diverted from making beer or soda, for example.
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Was just an initial list, as stated.

But my god man! No Coke Zero?! Screw it. Let everybody die! ;-)

LOL.

I’m way more concerned about normal human error at this scale than some (most?) of the logistics.

Will see how well they recover from a huge screw-up. There’s always one.
 
The Sanofi protein-based vaccine hit a snag in Phase 2. The dosage and or formulation was insufficient to produce a robust immune response in those over 50, and a lackluster response, about the same as convalescent patients in those 18-49. They will reformulate dosage and restart Phase 2 in February, with EUA now not expected until Q4 2021. That's 100 million doses contracted for in Warp Speed that won't be available soon if at all.

The registered Phase 2 trial will be conducted against an approved vaccine cohort instead of placebo due to ethical concerns. (Not many enrollees will want to risk a placebo in Q1 2021.)

So far the most successful technologies are mRNA and inactivated whole virus. Viral vector is still in limbo for a little while yet.
 
I have to recant everything bad I've said about the Astra Zeneca Vaccine. A really dumb mistake on my part. The vaccine is made with a vector derived from a Chimpanzee Adenovirus. I thought it was derived from an adenovirus associated viral vector, which has significant persistence in cells. The adenovirus vector shares no such property that I know of.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
It will work like the old iceboxes. They will simply have to replace the ice every few days. I've used dry ice to keep chemicals cold in a simple styrofoam box for 4 days before the dry ice ran out. I agree that the logistics will not be easy, I just feel it won't be as difficult as posited so long as there is a supply of carbon dioxide. Make sure the room used to keep the vaccines in dry ice is ventilated.
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This is from the Pfizer site about the box they have developed:

  • We also have developed packaging and storage innovations to be fit for purpose for the range of locations where we believe vaccinations will take place. We have specially designed,temperature-controlled thermal shippers utilizing dry ice to maintain recommended storage temperature conditions of -70°C±10°C for up to 10 days unopened. The intent is to utilize Pfizer-strategic transportation partners to ship by air to major hubs within a country/region and by ground transport to dosing locations.
  • We will utilize GPS-enabled thermal sensors with a control tower that will track the location and temperature of each vaccine shipment across their pre-set routes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These GPS-enabled devices will allow Pfizer to proactively prevent unwanted deviations and act before they happen.
  • Once a POU receives a thermal shipper with our vaccine, they have three options for storage:
    • - Ultra-low-temperature freezers, which are commercially available and can extend shelf life for up to six months.
    • - The Pfizer thermal shippers, in which doses will arrive, that can be used as temporary storage units by refilling with dry ice every five days for up to 30 days of storage.
    • - Refrigeration units that are commonly available in hospitals. The vaccine can be stored for five days at refrigerated 2-8°C conditions.
  • After storage for up to 30 days in the Pfizer thermal shipper, vaccination centers can transfer the vials to 2-8°C storage conditions for an additional five days, for a total of up to 35 days. Once thawed and stored under 2-8°C conditions, the vials cannot be re-frozen or stored under frozen conditions.
https://www.pfizer.com/news/hot-topics/covid_19_vaccine_u_s_distribution_fact_sheet





We'll be fine.
 
steingar said:
I have to recant everything bad I've said about the Astra Zeneca Vaccine. A really dumb mistake on my part. The vaccine is made with a vector derived from a Chimpanzee Adenovirus. I thought it was derived from an adenovirus associated viral vector, which has significant persistence in cells. The adenovirus vector shares no such property that I know of.
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Thanks for correcting the record.
 
I appreciate you acknowledging your mistake, but I think I tried to point this out to you way back in Page 1. I guess better late than never...

“With any new vaccine there are always concerns, but this would have to be the worst vaccine ever to be worse than COVID. Have you seen the short-term follow-up for COVID survivors? Have you seen how many still aren’t able to go back to work after 3 months (they have jobs, they just can’t physically do it)? How many are still having elevated troponin and signs of ongoing myocardial injury weeks to months out? How many will likely be permanently disabled, yet they survived.

Read the discussion section on this article. The adenovirus vector doesn’t stay around forever. You kill the adenovirus eventually and, often, the body does it so effectively that more than one dose of the vaccine is required.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31605-6/fulltext
“

steingar said:
I have to recant everything bad I've said about the Astra Zeneca Vaccine. A really dumb mistake on my part. The vaccine is made with a vector derived from a Chimpanzee Adenovirus. I thought it was derived from an adenovirus associated viral vector, which has significant persistence in cells. The adenovirus vector shares no such property that I know of.
Click to expand...
 
weilke said:
This is from the Pfizer site about the box they have developed:

  • We also have developed packaging and storage innovations to be fit for purpose for the range of locations where we believe vaccinations will take place. We have specially designed,temperature-controlled thermal shippers utilizing dry ice to maintain recommended storage temperature conditions of -70°C±10°C for up to 10 days unopened. The intent is to utilize Pfizer-strategic transportation partners to ship by air to major hubs within a country/region and by ground transport to dosing locations.
  • We will utilize GPS-enabled thermal sensors with a control tower that will track the location and temperature of each vaccine shipment across their pre-set routes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These GPS-enabled devices will allow Pfizer to proactively prevent unwanted deviations and act before they happen.
  • Once a POU receives a thermal shipper with our vaccine, they have three options for storage:
    • - Ultra-low-temperature freezers, which are commercially available and can extend shelf life for up to six months.
    • - The Pfizer thermal shippers, in which doses will arrive, that can be used as temporary storage units by refilling with dry ice every five days for up to 30 days of storage.
    • - Refrigeration units that are commonly available in hospitals. The vaccine can be stored for five days at refrigerated 2-8°C conditions.
  • After storage for up to 30 days in the Pfizer thermal shipper, vaccination centers can transfer the vials to 2-8°C storage conditions for an additional five days, for a total of up to 35 days. Once thawed and stored under 2-8°C conditions, the vials cannot be re-frozen or stored under frozen conditions.
https://www.pfizer.com/news/hot-topics/covid_19_vaccine_u_s_distribution_fact_sheet





We'll be fine.
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If they contracted for carbon dioxide, yes, I think we'll be fine. Pfizer almost certainly has supply in place for the shipments You've a bit more detail than I posted, though "temperature controlled thermal shippers" is probably fancy-speak for the fact that anything tends to keep the same temperature during a phase change, such as ice to water, water to steam, and solid carbon dioxide to gas. Also, as mentioned earlier, just shovel more dry ice into the containers to keep it cold, and this part is where the local shortages may arise.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
If they contracted for carbon dioxide, yes, I think we'll be fine. Pfizer almost certainly has supply in place for the shipments You've a bit more detail than I posted, though "temperature controlled thermal shippers" is probably fancy-speak for the fact that anything tends to keep the same temperature during a phase change, such as ice to water, water to steam, and solid carbon dioxide to gas. Also, as mentioned earlier, just shovel more dry ice into the containers to keep it cold, and this part is where the local shortages may arise.
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It's fancy speak for 'hardened styrofoam box with a GPS and temp tracker. They had pictures somewhere on how they stack the trays of vials with layers of dry ice in between. I want to say 5 trays of 1000 doses each per shipper.

As for the supply of dry ice. Pretty sure if our hospital gets a shipper and is looking for dry ice to keep it going for the two weeks it takes to reconstitute 500 doses/day and send out the immunization teams, they will have no difficulty finding a local manufacturing or food service company to share a few blocks of dry ice every day to keep the box cold.
 
Too bad there's no futures market for dry ice I'm aware of. A 10lb block has gone from $30 to $60 pretty much over night around these parts. Bet CO2 detectors are getting pricey as well.
 
steingar said:
There are going to be significant hurdles in widespread vaccination. Like @chemgeek so succinctly said, there are going to be some supply chain problems. Moreover, distributions going to give medical folks hairy kniptions, as they require extreme refrigeration not found universally. This thing is sadly a long way from over.

I do hope someone is able to generate an oral vaccine. Those go over far better in parts of the world where refrigeration can be problematic.
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Buy stock in companies and equipment that produce dry ice.
 
murphey said:
Buy stock in companies and equipment that produce dry ice.
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It isn't a single company, it is a supply chain. As mentioned earlier in the thread, dry ice is made from carbon dioxide. This, is a byproduct fermentation to make ethanol, and the production of ammonia (look in my previous posts for a citation). Both of these industries are producing less of their main product, which means they aren't producing the carbon dioxide byproduct either. CO2 is captured and stored as a liquid at room temperature, and this is used to make dry ice. Gas companies, such as Air Liquide and Praxair will probably do well. The sell the liquid to other places, such as your local welding shop, which supplied dry ice from the liquid. So you want the companies that supply carbon dioxide.
 
I wasn’t really bothered after the first shot but wouldn’t want to have flown after the second anyway because of shoulder soreness that lasted 2-3 days.

if mine is a typical reaction, the 48 hrs should not really be a hinderance.

Cheers
 
Cap'n Jack said:
I posted earlier in one of the threads that UAL can carry more dry ice than usual for vaccines.
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On the 777, the previous limit was 3,000lbs of dry ice. The exemption allows up to 15,000lbs on these vaccine cargo-only flights. A good bit of testing was put into the exemption including in-flight monitoring and testing with different ventilation configurations.
 
I received a letter today from the local Moderna Trial site Principal Investigators.

Apparently when the Moderna Vaccine is given a EUA, all participants in the Trial can learn if they received the Vaccine or Placebo. If those with the Placebo wish to be vaccinated, this will be permitted within 1-2 weeks after the EUA.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter.

“What happens to you after EUA is granted for mRNA-1273?
If the FDA grants an EUA for mRNA-1273, we intend to implement the following plan:
• You will be provided a new Informed Consent Form (like the one you got at the beginning of the study) that describes updated risks and benefits about your continued participation in the study, including alternative options given that the vaccine is available under EUA (including other COVID-19 vaccines).

• If you would like to know whether you have received the mRNA-1273 vaccine or placebo, then you will be offered the opportunity to be unblinded. Another option would be to stay in the study to continue to capture data in a blinded fashion.

o If you find out that you received mRNA-1273, we will ask you to continue to be followed in the study as originally planned. Your contribution is still very important to learning more about the vaccine and how long it might be protective against COVID-19.

o If you find out that you received placebo, we plan to offer you the opportunity to receive the mRNA-1273 vaccine and to continue to be followed in the study. We hope to start offering the vaccine within approximately 1-2 weeks after EUA is granted for mRNA-1273.
While the study has met its main objective, all participants are still contributing valuable information for the medical community and the public to learn about our vaccine. We ask that you please consider staying in the study for as long as possible.”

I intend to both asked to be unblinded so I can verify my extremely strong belief I have been vaccinated and also remain in the study.

Cheers
 
X3 Skier said:
I received a letter today from the local Moderna Trial site Principal Investigators.

Apparently when the Moderna Vaccine is given a EUA, all participants in the Trial can learn if they received the Vaccine or Placebo. If those with the Placebo wish to be vaccinated, this will be permitted within 1-2 weeks after the EUA.
Cheers
Click to expand...

I think that's the right thing to do, even though it is going to reduce the size of their placebo arm substantially. The FDA is reviewing the Moderna data today, tomorrow, and Thursday. My prediction is an EUA by Saturday, give or take a day.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
As you state, the companies involved have at least some of this taken care of

As for the air part, I posted at least twice, once recently in this thread, that United Airlines has a waiver to carry more dry ice than normally allowed; Pfizer has chartered with UAL for some of the delivery. Here's another citation, which mentions Delta Airlines too-https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-airlines-dry-ice-in-vaccine-transport-demands-special-attention-11607370720

Dry ice can be made as needed from liquid CO2, and this is stored under fairly a moderate pressure of 5 atmospheres (about 75 PSI) at room temperature. If you have a CO2 fire extinguisher someplace, you also have liquid CO2. When I need a small amount of dry ice, I'll make it from a tank that I have in the lab. I'll buy blocks or pellets if I need more.
Shipping medicines under dry ice is common now, although not at the scale we may need for several months. The packaging is standardized- here's one example: https://www.acpco2.com/en/chemical-industry/dry-ice-transporting-pharmaceutical-products

As for the tracking & inventory, pharmaceutical companies do that very well now, even for OTC medicines. Pfizer reportedly has an GPS/temperature sensor to track that a shipment hasn't "lost it's cool", and the location where that may have happened.

A good management team plans for success. This means while they were developing the vaccine, and during clinical trials, they were hopefully working out these details during this time and maybe testing them.

The Moderna vaccine can be stored for a month at around 4 degrees, which should ease things a bit. I suspect a vaccine will be in someone's arm in far less than a month of being placed in a vial.

Many of your concerns are valid, some less so. Carbon-dioxide can be diverted from making beer or soda, for example.
Click to expand...

this awesome. Just think of all the greenhouse CO2 omissions that we get to remove from the atmosphere of all this dry ice stuff. Vaccinations and easing climate change. Wow does it get any better. :)
 
Morgan3820 said:
this awesome. Just think of all the greenhouse CO2 omissions that we get to remove from the atmosphere of all this dry ice stuff. Vaccinations and easing climate change. Wow does it get any better. :)
Click to expand...

Hmmm, not sure I follow your reasoning, but regardless, this vaccine is a good thing.
 
Thank you for participating in the study and volunteering so we can all get a safe and effective vaccine. You are part of the solution.

X3 Skier said:
I received a letter today from the local Moderna Trial site Principal Investigators.

Apparently when the Moderna Vaccine is given a EUA, all participants in the Trial can learn if they received the Vaccine or Placebo. If those with the Placebo wish to be vaccinated, this will be permitted within 1-2 weeks after the EUA.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter.

“What happens to you after EUA is granted for mRNA-1273?
If the FDA grants an EUA for mRNA-1273, we intend to implement the following plan:
• You will be provided a new Informed Consent Form (like the one you got at the beginning of the study) that describes updated risks and benefits about your continued participation in the study, including alternative options given that the vaccine is available under EUA (including other COVID-19 vaccines).

• If you would like to know whether you have received the mRNA-1273 vaccine or placebo, then you will be offered the opportunity to be unblinded. Another option would be to stay in the study to continue to capture data in a blinded fashion.

o If you find out that you received mRNA-1273, we will ask you to continue to be followed in the study as originally planned. Your contribution is still very important to learning more about the vaccine and how long it might be protective against COVID-19.

o If you find out that you received placebo, we plan to offer you the opportunity to receive the mRNA-1273 vaccine and to continue to be followed in the study. We hope to start offering the vaccine within approximately 1-2 weeks after EUA is granted for mRNA-1273.
While the study has met its main objective, all participants are still contributing valuable information for the medical community and the public to learn about our vaccine. We ask that you please consider staying in the study for as long as possible.”

I intend to both asked to be unblinded so I can verify my extremely strong belief I have been vaccinated and also remain in the study.

Cheers
Click to expand...
 
X3 Skier said:
I received a letter today from the local Moderna Trial site Principal Investigators.

Apparently when the Moderna Vaccine is given a EUA, all participants in the Trial can learn if they received the Vaccine or Placebo. If those with the Placebo wish to be vaccinated, this will be permitted within 1-2 weeks after the EUA.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter.

“What happens to you after EUA is granted for mRNA-1273?
If the FDA grants an EUA for mRNA-1273, we intend to implement the following plan:
• You will be provided a new Informed Consent Form (like the one you got at the beginning of the study) that describes updated risks and benefits about your continued participation in the study, including alternative options given that the vaccine is available under EUA (including other COVID-19 vaccines).

• If you would like to know whether you have received the mRNA-1273 vaccine or placebo, then you will be offered the opportunity to be unblinded. Another option would be to stay in the study to continue to capture data in a blinded fashion.

o If you find out that you received mRNA-1273, we will ask you to continue to be followed in the study as originally planned. Your contribution is still very important to learning more about the vaccine and how long it might be protective against COVID-19.

o If you find out that you received placebo, we plan to offer you the opportunity to receive the mRNA-1273 vaccine and to continue to be followed in the study. We hope to start offering the vaccine within approximately 1-2 weeks after EUA is granted for mRNA-1273.
While the study has met its main objective, all participants are still contributing valuable information for the medical community and the public to learn about our vaccine. We ask that you please consider staying in the study for as long as possible.”

I intend to both asked to be unblinded so I can verify my extremely strong belief I have been vaccinated and also remain in the study.

Cheers
Click to expand...

I'm still waiting to hear from the Pfizer/BioNTech study. It would be unethical, not to mention harmful to the long-term study, to continue the double-blind study with a large placebo population that was primarily needed for the Phase 3 efficacy estimates. Participants will drop out of the study and obtain a known vaccine if the study remains double-blind. By unblinding the study, it will be possible to retain many of the original participants for longer-term monitoring. Offering the placebo group with a vaccine is a nice reward for participating in the study. I'm reasonably sure I got the real deal, but I suspect my spouse got the saline control. We would both like to remain in the longer term study (which will help establish durability of the vaccine immunity), but will not do so at the risk of passing up known protection.

The downside of likely getting the vaccine is that I get to do all the shopping now until we both know we are protected.
 
chemgeek said:
...

The downside of likely getting the vaccine is that I get to do all the shopping now until we both know we are protected.
Click to expand...

Any word wrt being able to spread the virus if you were vaccinated?
 
chemgeek said:
I'm still waiting to hear from the Pfizer/BioNTech study. It would be unethical, not to mention harmful to the long-term study, to continue the double-blind study with a large placebo population that was primarily needed for the Phase 3 efficacy estimates. Participants will drop out of the study and obtain a known vaccine if the study remains double-blind. By unblinding the study, it will be possible to retain many of the original participants for longer-term monitoring. Offering the placebo group with a vaccine is a nice reward for participating in the study. I'm reasonably sure I got the real deal, but I suspect my spouse got the saline control. We would both like to remain in the longer term study (which will help establish durability of the vaccine immunity), but will not do so at the risk of passing up known protection.

The downside of likely getting the vaccine is that I get to do all the shopping now until we both know we are protected.
Click to expand...

One would certainly expect the Pfizer group to receive the same options. Actually this is the third notification I received about the options should the Moderna Vaccine be approved. The first was in the Informed consent document at the start, the second was a letter when the efficacy was first released and now this one.

Cheers
 
Bob Noel said:
Any word wrt being able to spread the virus if you were vaccinated?
Click to expand...

The local study group gave the honest answer of they think you won’t transmit the disease after vaccinations but really don’t know. I intend to continue to practice the cautions recommended by the CDC but I’m not reluctant to travel.

Cheers.
 
Bob Noel said:
Any word wrt being able to spread the virus if you were vaccinated?
Click to expand...

We dont know yet and the Pfizer trial was not designed to look for that. They will have additional data coming in from their antibody surveillance to tell how many cases of asymptomatic covid their vaccine prevents, but there is nothing in the study design to answer that question. The proof for this will come out of post-approval surveillance.
 
X3 Skier said:
One would certainly expect the Pfizer group to receive the same options. Actually this is the third notification I received about the options should the Moderna Vaccine be approved. The first was in the Informed consent document at the start, the second was a letter when the efficacy was first released and now this one.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Speak of the devil. The letter to volunteers just arrive in my mailbox. Volunteers can learn of their status now if they are among the high priority groups (health care workers with high exposure risk, long term care residents) and receive a vaccine now. All others will not be able to learn their status or be eligible for getting the vaccine until 6 months after their second injection (April-May). I think there will be a few to jump ship if alternative vaccines are available to the general population in March. It would be nice if the full group could be unblinded now so volunteers can more safely decide to stay in the study for the long haul.
 
Bob Noel said:
Any word wrt being able to spread the virus if you were vaccinated?
Click to expand...

The phase 3 study was not designed for, nor could it make that determination based on the limited number of infection events in the experimental pool. Primate challenge studies suggest that the vaccine prevents viral spread as well as disease. Unfortunately, it is of questionable ethics to do challenge studies in humans. What I do know about the Pfizer trial is that they are aggressively collecting swab data from anyone in the trial that so much as has the sniffles. I've been swabbed four times already, three scheduled and one unscheduled. They may learn from this data whether or not the vaccine cohort ever has significant nasal viral titers.

Primate challenge trials for the Moderna vaccine were similar to that for Pfizer. Primate challenge trials for the AstraZeneca vaccine revealed that it prevented disease, but not high nasal viral titers in challenged individuals. So this could vary between the various vaccines.
 
X3 Skier said:
I intend to continue to practice the cautions recommended by the CDC but I’m not reluctant to travel.
Click to expand...

Knowing you are likely to have significant protection is huge. Especially if you are among those with the "wrong" blood type, etc. Now when I go the the grocery store I don't have to emulate "Supermarket Sweep." I know, intellectually, that the mortality and morbidity risk is low, probably in the low single digits percentage-wise without significant co-morbidities, but if you are over 60 you are still rolling unknown genetic dice, the price of a bad roll being really, really bad. It's kind of like, if you roll a 7, then a snake-eyes immediately after, you die. Wanna play?
 
denverpilot said:
Having been an Ops side engineer for almost three decades, I’m not kidding when I say my immediate relation to that was questions:

- How much dry ice per mile traveled/expected timeframes
- Are we forced to use special size-specific packaging?
- How big can we go and how many packages before we can’t do this by air? (Hazardous materials)
- How much and how often can our supplier deliver?
- Where are we going to store it while we package it up?

Argggggh. The list goes on and on in my head. Doesn’t even cover tracking, inventory, whether or not the styrofoam plant can even keep up on the boxes, multiple shipper tracking numbers...

These companies have some of this. The question is whether it was designed to massively SCALE. Likely not.

I don’t even want to think about what the internal conference calls sound like right now.
Click to expand...


Lol, I had a similar reaction. How much dry ice is going to evaporate over the trip and what's the shelf life. What's the accumulated out of temp time, probably measured in minutes.

Funny story, we had a driver once detained by an officer because his scale weight had gone down so much...due to evaporating dry ice!

Apparently hazmat is not a concern since they did fly a lot of the shipments out parcel. Roughly 1000 units / pallet, so the 85,000 units North Carolina got was 85 pallets, either 2 or 4 trucks...not sure if you can double stack them. That seems like so little, I thought they had started production early to have it stockpiled.
 
chemgeek said:
Speak of the devil. The letter to volunteers just arrive in my mailbox. Volunteers can learn of their status now if they are among the high priority groups (health care workers with high exposure risk, long term care residents) and receive a vaccine now. All others will not be able to learn their status or be eligible for getting the vaccine until 6 months after their second injection (April-May). I think there will be a few to jump ship if alternative vaccines are available to the general population in March. It would be nice if the full group could be unblinded now so volunteers can more safely decide to stay in the study for the long haul.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear about that approach. Might be a toss up either way since there may not be enough for six months anyway to cover the Trial participants who don’t fall into the two groups getting it early. They could have been more transparent about the rationale rather causing those not in the two early groups to feel expendable, so to speak.

Cheers
 
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