MedEwok wrote:
IATA warns that delivering a single vaccine dose to each person on earth requires a transport capacity equivalent to 8000 B747s
What makes IATA think a dose would ever be delivered to every person on earth?
It paints a rather sorry picture of the world to point out that once Europe, North America and the richer parts of Asia are taken care of then the vaccine (if it ever exists) will largely be considered to have been fully distributed.
IATA of course want to talk up demand for air transport. But even then the basic assumption in their calculation – that each 747 would only fly once in the distribution effort – is rather ridiculous. If you want to move say 100 747s’ worth of vaccine to one city you don’t hire 100 747s. You hire 10 and they go back and forth 10 times each. Or you send it by sea, or road. Apart from anything else there’s no point in some ridiculous quantity of vaccine arriving all at once because you can’t use it all at once.
Yes Graham, agree on all accounts. The idea that, once a vaccine is successfully tested and certified, it gets delivered to everyone on earth “at once” is quite ridiculous.
As I wrote a page or two earlier in this thread, producing sufficient quantity of the Influenza vaccine takes many months. Even with drastically improved capacity, it will take months if not years to produce enough doses of any SARS-CoV2 vaccine to vaccinate everyone. In the mean time, the readily made doses can be delivered easily by existing freight capacity, whether by sea, land or air.
I’m not sure I believe it. Most vaccines consist of a ml or two of fluid in a glass syringe in a box + a needle. If the whole combo weighs 10g (generous), then a million doses will way 10 tons. A 747 freighter can carry a payload of 113 tons. So if they can carry 10 million doses per flight, it should only take 1600 flights to distribute 8 billion doses – something just a few aircraft could accomplish given a timescale of perhaps 150 days – especially given that some flights would be short.
MedEwok wrote:
IATA warns that delivering a single vaccine dose to each person on earth requires a transport capacity equivalent to 8000 B747s
They need LaMaules or Cubs to do the last finish, I am not sure if @Jacko strip accept B747s 
I forgot “Tailwheel Pilots United” are not part of IATA !
MedEwok wrote:
IATA warns that delivering a single vaccine dose to each person on earth requires a transport capacity equivalent to 8000 B747s
Looks to me as if someone is playing smart a$$ with the data. If you were to produce all the vaccine at one particular place then maybe this might be how it is, but one can be quite sure that the vaccines will be produced by different companies in different locations throughout the world and therefore be locally available or at least short range transportation by surface and air will be combined.
Extremely interesting article in the renowned New England Journal of Medicine:
face masks could help create immunity
The authors basically postulate the following: Typical face masks as worn by the population (not specialist FFP2/FFP3 masks) will not block Covid-19 virus particles completely. That much is clear. But by reducing the dosage of virus particles one inhales, they could potentially facilitate low-grade infections, often clinically inapparent or asymptomatic, which will nevertheless lead to immunity in the affected persons. Thus, wearing a mask could potentially help to create widespread immunity if the wearer comes in contact with Covid-19 patients.
Seeing that more and more countries reach target marks of over 60 new infections per 100k inhabitants over 14 days, which I understand is the trigger value for quarantine in most places, I would expect quite severe travel restrictions coming up throughout the next weeks if not days. Switzerland is now up to 55 new infections/100k and
What is frustrating is that it is very difficult to actually keep up with different countries, e.g. where can you actually travel to without quarantine and where not.
Governments have to think about this again, the restrictions will wreck many parts of the economy and they are based on thin numbers. 50 or 60/100k were invented out of thin air months ago, but now with the number of tests per week having almost tripled, the error rates for false positives alone must be responsible for many apparent positive cases, the number of people who have to be hospitalized don´t seem to rise either, at least not in Germany, despite the rise in infections. Also I´m unsure if you can compare the numbers from different countries at all because I don´t know if the tests have the same quality (there must be dozens of different type ones) and whether the numbers are interpreted the same way (Ct 33 vs Ct 40 can make a difference of 70%).
Then you have to go into quarantine coming from a “high-risk country”, but living in a high-risk city nearby and working elsewhere you don´t. It doesn´t make any sense.
I agree, quarantine is the worst problem for the travel industry. Personally, I think testing on arrival or pre-departure much more reasonable, even though it can certainly mean that people who test negative can actually be positive a day later. Hence many countries such as Switzerland do not reckognize testing as an argument to shorten/forego quarantine, whereas Austria and others do.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Hence many countries such as Switzerland do not reckognize testing as an argument to shorten/forego quarantine, whereas Austria and others do.
Sweden does not impose any quarantine and currently has among the lowest rates of new cases in Europe…
