Predictions of when international flights may resume/bans lifted

[Brettmcg]

It will probably depend on how that country is going vaccinating their citizens. There are a few EU countries that we get reciprocal medicare so potentially it may fall under that

There will also be issues around which vaccines the Federal Government might accept as being suitably effective to allow individuals to avoid quarantine upon return to AU.

 

[dajop]

It’s isn’t always about Citizens, but residents.

 

[Pushka]

@Flying mermaid - you were pondering this issue earlier in one of the dratted Covid threads about your Dr Daughter in UK. Might work for you?

Vaccine passports to help international students return without quarantine​

International students may be able to enter Australia without having to quarantine next year if they get immunised for COVID-19, and can prove it.

 

[jakeseven7]

@Flying mermaid - you were pondering this issue earlier in one of the dratted Covid threads about your Dr Daughter in UK. Might work for you?

Vaccine passports to help international students return without quarantine​

International students may be able to enter Australia without having to quarantine next year if they get immunised for COVID-19, and can prove it.

Could only happen if Australia was well progressed with our vaccination program because the vaccines are not proven to stop them being a carrier...

 

[Flying mermaid]

Could only happen if Australia was well progressed with our vaccination program because the vaccines are not proven to stop them being a carrier...

I think it’s too early to really know all the finer details. The early vaccinations are going to be more like a big trial as they see what happens, how long they last and how much vaccinated people do carry/spread.

 

[jakeseven7]

I think it’s too early to really know all the finer details. The early vaccinations are going to be more like a big trial as they see what happens, how long they last and how much vaccinated people do carry/spread.

Apparently 28 days later and 28 weeks later are being streamed very highly in London for preparation of what may happen! Has been going wild on Tik Tok!

 

[Flying mermaid]

Apparently 28 days later and 28 weeks later are being streamed very highly in London for preparation of what may happen! Has been going wild on Tik Tok!

Have to admit I feel a tiny bit nervous about daughter getting it, but on the other hand she could get the actual virus anytime, so lesser of two evils!

 

[MEL_Traveller]

So... it seems there's a school of thought that even if vaccines start to get rolled out, we shouldn't allow travel until everyone who wants a vaccine has had the opportunity to do so: WHO says e-vaccination certificates could be key to unlocking global travel

[digital health passports] ... build on sensitive personal health information to create a new distinction between individuals based on their health status, which can then be used to determine the degree of freedoms and rights individuals may enjoy.​

​

So maybe that's behind the AU government's reluctance to open outbound travel until the end of next year... everyone with equal rights?

 

[ayushamity]

So maybe that's behind the AU government's reluctance to open outbound travel until the end of next year... everyone with equal rights?

​

That's the assumption. 2021 is another write off for international travel

 

[MEL_Traveller]

That's the assumption. 2021 is another write off for international travel

... seems to be at odds with A2J's comments that maybe international travel would now open from mid July.

 

[trevella]

... seems to be at odds with A2J's comments that maybe international travel would now open from mid July.

Not really. Things can get tentatively back under way without being anything remotely close to 'normal'. You can't just flick a switch.

Predicting vaccine rollout timing and the like is ultimately less important than predicting what your government will do. At the moment they are working towards a 'late 2021' restart, and have assessed that any downside associated with waiting that long is acceptable.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Not really. Things can get tentatively back under way without being anything remotely close to 'normal'. You can't just flick a switch.

Predicting vaccine rollout timing and the like is ultimately less important than predicting what your government will do. At the moment they are working towards a 'late 2021' restart, and have assessed that any downside associated with waiting that long is acceptable.

I think that was the ethical point of the argument... you can’t really get things tentatively underway if the policy is that no one gets to leave until everyone can leave.

Qantas has said ‘no jab, no fly’. A person usually buying higher priced premium tickets might be way down the list for eligibility, and there goes a significant chunk of your revenue.

I can see business demanding exemptions to move themselves up the priority list. But is that fair?

 

[RAM]

Interestingly nephew is currently mid air from Paris flying to Japan then on to Sydney to arrive tomorrow morning. The last week saw many flights on Japanese airlines open up for passengers to come back to Australia. I wonder if there was something that was discussed when Morrison visited a couple of weeks ago.

Out of interest is he flying ANA or JAL?

With the increase in daily (Sydney) & weekly limits then that should have seen some boost come through especially via Japan given their pretty strict international border controls (so helps as a transit only location).

ANA carried 30 inbound passengers on 11 flights & 31 on 2 flights into Australia in August, then in September carried just 29 per flight. Total passenger capacity per flight was 240. Their outbound load fell from 74/flight in August to 43/flight in September - not a good trend for covering costs.

The October figures should be out next week. JAL carried zero passengers in those months - so it would be a change if they're back to passenger flights now!

The downside of JAL carrying passengers again is that it will reduce revenue/flight for all the other carriers as #passengers/flight drops. On some days it would equate to an 8% fall in passengers/flight for each of the other airlines. JAL has been operating scheduled 'freighter' services but, as detailed previously, the Fed Govt counts those flights as 'passenger flights' for statistical purposes!

A CV version of the three card trick!

 

[Pushka]

Out of interest is he flying ANA or JAL?

With the increase in daily (Sydney) & weekly limits then that should have seen some boost come through especially via Japan given their pretty strict international border controls (so helps as a transit only location).

ANA carried 30 inbound passengers on 11 flights & 31 on 2 flights into Australia in August, then in September carried just 29 per flight. Total passenger capacity per flight was 240. Their outbound load fell from 74/flight in August to 43/flight in September - not a good trend for covering costs.

The October figures should be out next week. JAL carried zero passengers in those months - so it would be a change if they're back to passenger flights now!

The downside of JAL carrying passengers again is that it will reduce revenue/flight for all the other carriers as #passengers/flight drops. On some days it would equate to an 8% fall in passengers/flight for each of the other airlines. JAL has been operating scheduled 'freighter' services but, as detailed previously, the Fed Govt counts those flights as 'passenger flights' for statistical purposes!

A CV version of the three card trick!

ANA. My niece (his wife) has had multiple SQ flights booked but they were starting to date so he wouldn’t even be bothered getting here for Christmas. Then like I mentioned a whole stack of seats/dates lined up on ANA that simply had not been available before. Grabbed them! SQ transit times, and via Frankfurt and obviously Singapore were awful. 40 hour flight. This one was around 26 hours from Paris direct.
He should have arrived by now into Sydney.

 

[RAM]

Agree the more people vaccinated the better. But Moderna is saying having the vaccine will reduce the severity ('100% success rate in reducing severity'.). That's all my elderly parents and elderly relatives need. They can accept the risk from there on.

Whichever definition of lockdown... 'light' or 'severe', I'm not a supporter of a two-tiered system where some can party while others can't go to the RSL to see their mates.

Last week I posted (on one of the AFF threads) the CMO saying that they were not testing the severity of the outcomes but he 'hoped' it would decrease it.

The maths

The news is definitely good but not exceptional, not even wonderful really. As the ABC's Norman Swan said; "This isn't the beginning of the end for CV, but the end of the beginning." A great third step, as it were, of a long journey.

The 'emergency use authorisation' absolves Big Pharma of ANY liability for adverse impacts from taking the vaccine whether currently known or unknown. So, if for example it has an unfortunate (serious) side effect such as making people sterile (global warming solved!) - then the drug company cannot be sued as long as at the date of approval it did not conclusively know of it.

Australia (luckily) does not have such a 'free pass' mechanism.

The emergency approval of the Pfizer vaccine is based on the Phase 3 trial which began on July 27th, the results used for the 'emergency use authorisation' are based on the first 3.5 months for the very first participants, and less than a couple of days for the last 5,000:

• Out of the planned total Phase III trials involving over 43,000 participants (appears around 2,500 were ruled out after reviewing Nov 9 interim analysis but for some reason Pfizer does not mention why), around 41,000 (+5,000 net increase after elimination of the above mentioned 2,500 on a week earlier) had received their 2nd dose (of either vaccine or placebo).
• Just 170 of these 41,000 caught CV - so 0.41% of these particpants
• Placebo 162 & vaccine 8
• Serious CV cases 10: 9 placebo & 1 vaccine
• Efficacy = 1 - (8 / 162) = 95.06% which to their credit Pfizer called 95% (unlike Moderna who used a 4th decimal place to round up, if they'd used 3rd decimal place it would have gone down)

Using a 'media spin' approach then you could have the headline that 'Vaccine more than doubles risk of severe CV cases' as 12.5% of all +ve vaccinated cases are serious vs 5.6% of placebo cases.

Statistically that statement is not as valid as the 95% efficacy statement - but it is only around 1 standard deviation less valid!

Pfizer and BioNTech Conclude Phase 3 Study of COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate, Meeting All Primary Efficacy Endpoints | Pfizer

Primary efficacy analysis demonstrates BNT162b2 to be 95% effective against COVID-19 beginning 28 days after the first dose; 170 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were evaluated, with 162 observed in the placebo group versus 8 in the vaccine group Efficacy was consistent across age, gender, race and...

www.pfizer.com

None of the media, that I've come across, have looked to see whether over this time period (since July 27th to Nov 13th) did participants catch CV at the same, greater than or at a lesser rate than the wider population? Being the pedant I got out the calculator & found that the participants caught CV at a significantly lower rate than non-participants over that period in the US or UK. This is a more statistically significant result than the efficacy result BTW - but totally spurious, or is it?

Just how much higher was the infection rate for non-participants? 5%, 10%, 40%, 100%, 200%, 300%, 1,000%?

For the UK the number of people testing positive (should be a much lower proportion as unlike the trials - everyone in the UK is not getting contacted weekly/monthly so misses out the asymptomatic cases who don't notice), between those dates was just over 1,000,000. Strictly speaking I should deduct all those who had previously tested positive from the UK pop'n figure but if you won't tell...

1,000,000 out of UK pop'n of 68 million = 1.5%, vs trial particpants at 0.4%. Don't shoot me BUT perhaps an immediate campaign should be launched telling the UK or US public to take part in a vaccine trial, give them the same literature/briefings given to the participants of this trial - and the UK/US may see a 70+% drop in CV cases!

Does anyone wonder why the Worldometer site does not provide the set of graphs for either the US or any US state? Makes it much harder to do the calculations.

That's the risk of 'emergency use authorisations' - the UK has come down on the side that the known risks (people dying from CV) are greater than the possible unknown side effects. A typical Phase 3 study will monitor participants for 3 to 5 years after last dose to determine what possible medium to long term side effects may emerge. Side effects that take longer to appear (such as with statins) are missed.

This is not being a naysayer but being scientific vs spin doctoring.

The figures for Moderna are:

• 196 particpants testing positive out of 30,000 enrolled 100% in the US, just under 26K had received their 2nd dose
• 185 with the placebo & 11 with the vaccine (after 2 doses, those who caught it after the first dose are excluded, not stated by Pfizer included/excluded that I could find)
• Efficacy = 1 - (11 / 185) = 1 - .0595 = 94.05%, claimed as 94.1%

The Moderna preliminary data saw the efficacy fall from 94.5% (in their media release but do the numbers yourself & get 94.4%) when 95 participants tested positive to 94.1 with 196 particpants testing positive. After the AZ/Oxford 'issues', here's the efficacy for the next 101 to test positive (cases # 96 to 196)
= 1 - (6 / 95) = 1 - .0632 = 93.7% efficacy.

Excluding those who had the 1st dose but not the second & caught CV in the meantime overstates the efficacy.

Meanwhile the figures for short term side effects of the Moderna vaccine are mutliples of what Pfizer revealed.

Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate Meets its Primary Efficacy Endpoint in the First Interim Analysis of the Phase 3 COVE Study | Moderna, Inc.

First interim analysis included 95 participants with confirmed cases of COVID-19 Phase 3 study met statistical criteria with a vaccine efficacy of 94.5% (p

investors.modernatx.com

The majority of adverse events were mild or moderate in severity. Grade 3 (severe) events greater than or equal to 2% in frequency after the first dose included injection site pain (2.7%), and after the second dose included fatigue (9.7%), myalgia (8.9%), arthralgia (5.2%), headache (4.5%), pain (4.1%) and erythema/redness at the injection site (2.0%). These solicited adverse events were generally short-lived.

The Moderna trial only completed its 'enrollment' of participants on October 22nd, that does not appear to mean they'd received their first injection though, 25,564 had received their 2nd dose. They do not state when the trials began though.

"immediately contacting the study physician if they are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19."

Everything you want to know about the Moderna trial....

Moderna’s Fully Enrolled Phase 3 COVE Study of mRNA-1273 | Moderna, Inc.

www.modernatx.com

Moderna are seeking 'Emergency use authorisation' within 5 weeks of signing up their last participants and before those have had their 2nd injection. To me, this helps explain Faucci's comments in the US last night about 'rushing'. 5 weeks vs previously 3 to 5 years pre-CV does seem akin to 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!

______________________________________________________​

Whilst wanting (& actually needing) to go overseas - after delving with a bit more rigour than many commentators, I am happier for the rollout of vaccinations in Australia & international flying opening up to be more delayed than I was previously.

Some vaccines I will not touch with a barge pole (AZ/Oxford despite being 'old tech'), and the for the others I am not in such a rush. This is purely my opinion and I can be totally wrong in the conclusions I am drawing. If I was able to travel & the need was higher than my current situation (reassessed cost vs benefit - no point being the richest person in the graveyard) then I would prefer to pay the 14 day quarantine hotel cost on return vs be an early vaccination candidate (assuming could be).

Whether they realise it or not - the UK is being volunteered as non-clinical guinea pigs.

I really hope all goes well.

​

 

[Pom-DownUnder]

The Prime Minister "It must be safe, our priority is to make sure its safe, it has to be safe" rinse and repeat until people stop asking why its going to be so bloody late

distract distract distract has to be safeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

[Pom-DownUnder]

Does anyone wonder why the Worldometer site does not provide the set of graphs for either the US or any US state? Makes it much harder to do the calculations.

​

New York COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

New York COVID-19 Coronavirus update by county with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, current active cases, recoveries, historical data, trends, projections, and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

California COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

California COVID-19 Coronavirus update by county with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, current active cases, recoveries, historical data, trends, projections, and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

United States COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

United States Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

?

 

[Pushka]

Apparently my ESTA visa is about to expire according to an email just received. Yeah, Nah, renewal can wait.....likely years for the USA. They are in full on "survival of the fittest" mode over there.

 

[RAM]

New York COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

New York COVID-19 Coronavirus update by county with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, current active cases, recoveries, historical data, trends, projections, and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

California COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

California COVID-19 Coronavirus update by county with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, current active cases, recoveries, historical data, trends, projections, and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

United States COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

United States Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

?

Thanks for that.

When your post came up my PC had a fit for some reason. I could not see anything but garbage, so clicked on one link, to get the normal no graphs above the list of the various states etc. So scrolled down, to find all the graphs are shown below the table!

 

[RAM]

Apparently my ESTA visa is about to expire according to an email just received. Yeah, Nah, renewal can wait.....likely years for the USA. They are in full on "survival of the fittest" mode over there.

Yes, I got that sad news some months back - easy decision. Now my passport is expiring!

Just wish other fees & charges were so cheap in comparison.

As has previously been reported, no, the Australian Govt is not extending them (impossible to do easily) but then again neither is it providing discounted renewals either! Got to pay off the extra $300bn some way I suppose!