That's ok. I'll get a jab for that, as well

German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, which developed a trailblazing COVID-19 vaccine, will trial a cancer treatment in Britain using the same mRNA technology, the company said on Friday.


Up to 10,000 people will receive the immunotherapy tailored to individual tumors by the end of 2030, either in trials or as an approved treatment, BioNTech said in a statement.

The project is part of a new agreement with the British government focused on "cancer immunotherapies, infectious disease vaccines, and expansion of BioNTech's footprint in the UK", the company said.

BioNTech will also open a new research and development center with around 70 staff in Cambridge, as well as setting up a regional headquarters in London.

"Our goal is to accelerate the development of immunotherapies and vaccines using technologies we have been researching for over 20 years," said Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech.

The UK "successfully delivered COVID-19 vaccines so quickly", he said, demonstrating "that drug development can be accelerated without cutting corners if everyone works seamlessly together towards the same goal".

The messenger RNA method made its debut with the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, which was the first jab against COVID to be approved in the West in late 2020.

Scientists believe mRNA vaccines, which provoke an immune response by delivering genetic molecules containing the code for key parts of a pathogen into human cells, could be a game-changer against many diseases.

They also take less time to develop than traditional vaccines.

BioNTech's COVID-19 shot was developed and approved by regulators in less than a year.

BioNTech is also working on mRNA-based vaccines against malaria, influenza and shingles.

The company has been developing mRNA-based cancer therapies since it was founded in 2008 and they have been trialed on several hundred people so far.

medicalexpress.com

xandreu wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 11:36 am I'm not one for conspiracy theories - in fact, most of them, and those that peddle them, really annoy me, unless they're backed up by verifiable, reliable evidence.

However, so many things about the current Chinese situation simply don't make sense, and the mainstream media seem to be doing their damn best at avoiding giving any explanation as to what's going on whatsoever.

While more people are currently dying in China than at any time since the start of the pandemic (according to many analysts, as the official Chinese numbers can't be trusted) the Chinese government are continuing to insist that this is still the omicron variant and that the overwhelming majority of people don't need to go to hospital and will recover within a week or so. This, despite numerous reports coming out of China such as bodies being left in vehicles for up to a week while they wait for a space at the crematorium, and frozen food storage fridges being used as emergency morgues. It's like being back at the start of 2020 again, and doesn't at all align with the official story of this being the relatively harmless omicron variant which most people recover from within a week.

And yet these people are now being allowed free reign to travel around the world at whim. While some countries have put some restrictions in place, they seem very lax and most countries won't insist on these travellers quarantining even if they arrive from China and test positive. I read the other day that in two recent test flights, more than half of passengers arriving from China were found to be positive.

So many questions -

Is this really 'just' the omicron variant?
If so, why are so many people dying?
If so many people are dying, why are they being allowed to travel freely around the world?
Why doesn't there seem to be much, or any, concern about this in global media?

I realise that the rest of the world have mostly been vaccinated now, and perhaps most Chinese haven't, or they have. but with their own non-effective vaccines, but that still doesn't explain the fact that omicron itself is supposed to be acting as a natural vaccine - few, in any, symptoms, leading to natural immunity.

Why so many deaths, and given these deaths, why the freedom to travel?

I don't think there's anything suspicious about the China situation, what's happening is what the health experts have been saying would happen all along if covid got loose there. It was inevitable, and most likely why they tried to take the zero covid approach.

China doesn't have a strong health system, the number of hospital beds per 100,000 people is a lot lower than in more developed countries. In flu season (now) hospitals are always really busy, on a bad pollution day (they're frequent in winter because of the coal burnt for heating) even more so, they're packed. Trying to see a doctor can be a hellish, frustrating experience. I wouldn't want to have been in an accident and have an eye hanging out or something, you could easily be waiting in agony all day. Throw another 500 or so covid patients into the average hospital, which is already struggling, and you can see how hospitals are being overwhelmed now.

The people have been vaccinated, but a lot of them haven't been boosted, or boosted recently. Apparently lots of the elderly haven't been vaccinated at all, traditional Chinese medicine is often seen as being suitable for 'Chinese bodies', and western medicine is distrusted, especially among older people. This means a lot of vulnerable people in a system that isn't prepared.

I have a lot of close friends, ex-workmates, and random people I met and gave my number to in China. I talk to a lot of them regularly and see their updates via Wechat (the Chinese social media APP). People there - almost everyone I know - have been getting covid, feeling like absolute shit for a week or so, then recovering, pretty much the same as everywhere else. Some people have said every apartment in their building has people sick with covid, most of the people they work with have it and I've seen people 'guesstimating' more than 50% of the city are sick at the moment. They're also confirming a lot of people in the community are dying - mostly the elderly, which is what you'd expect.
Cities in China are big, that has to be literally millions of people in every city getting sick with covid at the same time.

I don't know what the average global mortality rate is for vulnerable, unvaccinated people who can't get proper medical care - let's guess 1% - 1% of millions of people is still a really big number, but it's probably no more than you'd expect given the situation. We saw the same thing play out in Wuhan when the pandemic started, then in Italy, Brazil, and India.

Why are they opening up now? I think it's just because, after trying to control the situation for this long it got to the point where they can't do it anymore, they have no choice.

The outbreaks were getting more and more frequent, it was obvious they couldn't keep it under control for much longer.
They were facing international criticism for their zero covid approach, and were under pressure from the rest of the world to open up.
They were facing unrest within China, the people just couldn't handle lockdowns anymore and were starting to riot.
The most recent economic data showed the economy was doing worse than they thought, zero covid was killing the economy.

Thai Expert...

Not sure about the this. There does seem to be an awful lot of #DiedSuddenly going on, but perhaps only because people didn't notice before. Might also be Covid itself, rather than the vaccines. In any case, until it is sorted out, I'm happy I got the Chinese SinoVac (two shots) made by known technology rather than the more experimental mRNA.