SA to get Oxford vaccine amongst others

 

The following are the reasons why the Oxford/AstraZeneca is a good option.

ChAdOx1 has been tested in South Africa with our demographic and environmental factors (https://biotechscope.com/oxford-universitys-fridge-stored-covid-19-vaccine-is-90-effective/);

ChAdOx1 was tested with the participation of one of our leading universities (Wits) and hence its selection will demonstrate trust of our local academic community and professionals (https://www.wits.ac.za/covid19vaccine/oxford-covid-19-vaccine-trial/);

ChAdOx1 does not use mRNA (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/23/oxford-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-everything-we-know-so-far), unlike other vaccines, which is causing a lot of fear (ill-founded) about DNA modification in social media, hence driving vaccine resistance (https://www.businessinsider.co.za/by-mid-december-47-of-south-africans-said-they-refuse-a-coronavirus-jab-up-sharply-from-oct-2021-1);

ChAdOx1 can be stored in a normal refrigerator and does not require super cooling to remain viable (Ref: 1 above);

AstraZeneca have indicated that they will charge cost price ($2-10) per dose rather than profiteer (https://www.businessinsider.co.za/covid-vaccine-2020-11).

It requires two doses (first a half dose, and second a full dose 28 days later) to be 90% effective, which to our reading means that they have not made exaggerated claims of efficacy. (Ref: 1 above).

Supporting journal articles published in The Lancet are available at http://www.thelancet.com/retrieve/pii/S0140673620326611 and https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32466-1

https://sacoronavirus.co.za/2021/01/07/update-on-sars-cov-2-vaccine-rollout-strategy/

However I understand that the Johnson and Johnson vaccine has similar properties.


Popular posts from this blog

What is Generative AI?

This is the second of two posts on Generative AI. Late last year (November), OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public. However, it took a few months for the internet at large to catch on and realise the potential of this new tool. The trend started to take off in December, and by February everyone was talking about it. ChatGPT is an example of a "Generative AI". To recapitulate, let's see what this means. For convenience, let's call AIs that are not generative, "regular" AIs. Regular or "Narrow" AI (Artificial Intelligence): Regular AI, often referred to as "narrow" or "specific" AI, focuses on building systems that can perform specific tasks or solve specific problems. These AI systems are designed to operate within predefined boundaries and excel at specialised tasks. For example, a regular AI could be created to classify images, play chess, or process natural language. Another example is the AI that chooses your words in predict...
Read more

The risks of Deepfakes and a proposal to combat them - Edited

Author note. I wrote this article below after seeing the "Sassy Justice" deepfake online in 2021. Since then the matter has become much more serious since the proliferation of online AI tools in the last year. Update : The proposal has been updated to include copyright of one's own voice in the wake of the Stephen Fry incident and another example of cyberstalking with facial recognition.  Update 2: The USA is considering legislation like this.  https://petapixel.com/2023/10/16/no-fakes-act-seeks-to-ban-unauthorized-ai-generated-likenesses   Proposal to United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Pre-empting the problem of Deepfake videos Background We presently stand on the edge of an abyss in which social media threatens to uproot our world order and cast us into chaos, as we see with the recent attacks (6 January 2021) on the American Capitol by conspiracy theorists incentivised on social media. Deepfake videos are motion pictures that are created to look like they depict ...
Read more

Risks of ChatGPT

 Having fiddled with ChatGPT for a while now, I have identified the following two risks. 1. Hallucination . It sometimes just makes stuff up. This is particularly annoying when you give it the information and it goes on a tangent and makes stuff up that was not in the source information. For example, when I gave it some meeting notes, it went on a tangent about N-P completeness in computer science. OK?!? 2. Memory errors . The memory feature that they have added messes up a lot. I have noticed that it performs two mistakes: Recites what it gave you previously , even if the topic was utterly different . For example I gave it some meeting notes to summarise and it spat out some Python code that I had asked for last year. Totally irrelevant! Recites what it gave you previously, because the content was similar , in its opinion. I created a new chat, gave it the meeting notes, and it gave me the PREVIOUS summary of the previous set of meeting notes. In one case it was even worse! It g...
Read more