Tag: vaccines

Goodbye traffic lights

New Zealand took a major step in its COVID-19 trajectory this week, removing the traffic light system which (theoretically) controlled behaviour according to numbers of cases of COVID-19. Are we glad to see it go?

Early or Late?

The Serum Institute in India has rapidly pivoted to producing COVID vaccines while other entities have sat on the fence, wondering about what to do, slowing the progression towards available COVID vaccines. This is a common problem – I estimate 5% of the population like to be early and the remainder are not too stressed about timing.

Hope & reality

For any sort of normal to reappear in the world, we need the vaccines that have now been developed to be rolled out to achieve herd immunity. For New Zealand, it looks like that won’t happen until 2022 given we don’t yet have vaccines in the country. That’s a long time staying home…

Human Endeavour

Humans are capable of such amazing feats, both of creation and destruction. Gold miners built water faces across mountain faces in pursuit of the precious metal in the Wakatipu and vaccines are being developed apace in the face of the COVID pandemic.

Vaccine races

There are over 200 vaccines for COVID-19 being worked on – up from 70 in April and 120 in June. Seven vaccines are already in Phase 3 clinical trials (the last step before release) and another three are planned for June. Many of these trials are taking place in countries with poor health care systems and little money. Should we be concerned?