1/ Great thread here by my old friend @CharlesBHolmes.
Regeneron's press release (not a study!) didn't comment on side-effects. With other monoclonal antibodies, side-effects have included fever, chills, weakness, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, low blood pressure, & rash.
2/ More severe side-effects may include: life-threatening anaphylaxis, cytokine release syndrome (also caused by COVID), cardiac toxicity, clotting dysfunction, immune-related effects, infections, autoimmunity, and off-target effects.
3/ The Regeneron monoclonal antibody cocktail is so new we don't yet have data on its side-effects. And it hasn't been tested in older patients, like the president.
4/ Yes, monoclonal antibodies are a promising approach for the treatment of COVID (more here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s1e…), but I find it perplexing that such an experimental drug with unknown risk profile would be given to the president.
5/ I also think it's strange that the decision to treat the president with monoclonal antibodies was made without consultation with an infectious disease specialist or members of the WH Coronavirus Taskforce, who are among the world's leading experts (e.g. Dr. Fauci).
6/ It's certainly possible that the president's decompensation and need for hospitalization could be due to the monoclonal antibody cocktail, but in the absence of information and transparency on the part of the WH, it's impossible to know.
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1/ H5N1 bird flu candidate vaccine viruses have been identified:
(jump to 1:33)
🔹2 are "well-matched" to H5N1 infecting dairy cattle
🔹but how "well-matched" are they really? this conclusion is based on ferret dataastho.org/education/hpai…
2/ 🔹Candidate vaccine viruses are used to make antigen (i.e. the target you want the immune system to see) for vaccines.
🔹Adjuvant has also been stockpiled.
🔹Adjuvants help strengthen the immune response to antigen in vaccines.
3/
🔹100s of thousands of doses of candidate antigen + adjuvant have been manufactured for use in clinical studies.
🔹2 safety/immunogenicity studies are being conducted.
🔹@ASPRgov is working with @US_FDA & industry to figure out a regulatory pathway for the use of these doses.
1/ Stemming the spread of H5N1 bird flu
🔹The federal government is ramping up testing of dairy cows
🔹Cows will now have to be tested before being transferred to another state
🔹H5N1 viral fragments detected in grocery store milk
🔹The risk to humans remains low at this time
2/ Remember PCR tests from COVID?
They can be positive even after you’ve recovered because they’re picking up dead virus.
Some PCR tests on pasteurized milk from grocery stores have come back positive for bird flu... but that could just be dead virus.
3/ Pasteurization has worked for over a hundred years to protect consumers from bacteria and viruses.
There’s no reason to think pasteurization won’t also work to kill the bird flu virus, but scientists are confirming that with testing anyway.