Covid 19- Pfizer Covid vaccine may not protect against infection in kids - by Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

Two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine offer almost no protection against coronavirus infection in kids ages 5 to 11, according to new data posted online — a finding that may have consequences for parents and their vaccinated children.

Researchers from the New York State Department of Health found that the vaccine’s effectiveness dropped to 12 percent from 68 percent in the age group in December and January, when the omicron variant of the coronavirus began circulating widely in the United States.

Read more at:Pfizer Covid vaccine may not protect against infection in kids

China Corona virus pill: China conditionally approves Pfizer’s Covid treatment pill Paxlovid

China’s medical products regulator has conditionally approved Pfizer’s Covid-19 drug Paxlovid, making it the first oral pill specifically developed to treat the disease cleared in the country.

The National Medical Products Administration said Paxlovid had been approved to treat adults who have mild to moderate Covid-19 and who are at high risk of progressing to a severe condition. Further study on the drug needed to be conducted and submitted to the authority, it said.

Read more at: China conditionally approves Pfizer’s Covid treatment pill Paxlovid | China | The Guardian

Japan -Pfizer Vaccines: Contaminated Pfizer Vaccines Reported In Several Japanese Cities

Several cities in Japan have reported ‘white-colored floating substances’ in Vials of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, according to Bloomberg.

The vials came from lot FF5357, where white contaminants were first reported by Kamakura City in Kanagawa prefecture. On Tuesday, two more cities – neighboring Sagamihara and Sakai City in Osaka prefecture reported contaminated vials, however there were no reports of adverse reactions. In Sagamihara, white substances were reported at three different vaccination sites on Sept. 11, 12 and 14.

Read more at: Contaminated Pfizer Vaccines Reported In Several Japanese Cities

Coronavirus Vaccine: Pfizer vaccine sofar effective against Variants says developer

One of the people behind the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine says he has yet to see any evidence that emerging variants of the disease have found a way to defeat it.

Dr. Ugur Sahin, who founded BioNTech with his wife Dr. Özlem Türeci, told CBC News Network's Power & Politics today that scientists have two main concerns when it comes to variants of the COVID-19 virus.

Read more at: Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine not troubled by variants so far, says CEO | CBC News

Vaccination Covid Immunity Period: How Long Will COVID-19 Vaccine Immunity Last? - by Jennifer Rainey Marquez,

After half a million deaths and more than a year of lockdowns, quarantines, masking and social distancing, the U.S. is in the midst of a vaccination campaign that aims to put an end to the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Months of rigorous testing and clinical trials have shown that the vaccines are safe and highly effective at preventing COVID-19 and will likely fend off serious illness or hospitalization even if you do get sick. What's still unclear is just how long that protection will last, or whether we'll eventually need boosters or follow-up shots to protect against new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

A piece of the answer came today from Pfizer, which announced that its vaccine, after the second dose, was shown to be highly effective for up to six months — even against one of the well-known virus variants.

Read more at: How Long Will COVID-19 Vaccine Immunity Last?

Pfizer Vaccine: Caution needed in using mRNA-based vaccines to prevent unknown risks including death - by Liu Caiyu

The large-scale use of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines including those produced by Pfizer and Moderna may contain unknown risks, Chinese experts warned, and called for the cautious use of such vaccines following the death of a patient in the US.

A Beijing-based immunologist, who requested anonymity, told the Global Times on Monday that some components in mRNA vaccines, such as polyethylene glycol (PEG), have not been used in vaccine production before, and it is no surprise to see allergic reactions in some people. The liposome physical properties of the vaccine also carry the risk of causing abnormal immune function disorders.

He called on suspension of the use of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines on the elderly and people with underlying diseases, as this new technology has not proven to be safe in large-scale use. Previously, Norway reported the deaths of 23 elderly Norwegian people who received mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. All the deaths occurred in frail, elderly patients in nursing homes. All were over 80 years old and some of them over 90, Norwegian media NRK reported.

Read more at:Caution needed in using mRNA-based vaccines to prevent unknown risks including death - Global Times

The ABC of Covid-19 Vaccines: Covid vaccine differences? Pfizer v Oxford v Moderna

The three Covid-19 vaccines are from Pfizer-BioNTech, the University of Oxford and Astra-Zeneca and Moderna.

The Pfizer, Oxford and Moderna vaccines each require two doses and you are not fully vaccinated until you've had both shots.

But there are many differences between them.

READ MORE AT: Covid vaccine differences? Pfizer v Oxford v Moderna - BBC News

Coronavirus vaccine : Our COVID-19 vaccine is 90% effective, says Pfizer - by Alice Tidey

A potential COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech has been found to be more than 90% effective.

The vaccine has been tested on more than 43,500 participants during Phase 3 — the final stage of development when it is given to thousands to test its efficacy and safety.

Analysis carried out evaluated that 94 trial participants had been confirmed to have contracted COVID-19.

"Today is a great day for science and humanity," Pfizer Chairman and CEO, Dr Albert Bourla, said in a statement.

Read more at: Coronavirus: Our COVID-19 vaccine is 90% effective, says Pfizer | Euronews

Pharmaceutical Industry: Obama Kills Largest Corporate Attempt Yet To Flee Overseas And Dodge Taxes - by Alan Pyke

Pfizer plan to skip out on American tax obligations - KAPUT

The largest-ever corporate merger to skip out on American tax obligations is now kaput.

Drug giant Pfizer is giving up on its corporate marriage to Ireland-based Allergan after an Obama administration policy change designed to prevent U.S. companies from fleeing taxes by moving their mailing address abroad. The $160 billion merger cemented last fall would have produced significant tax savings for Pfizer, at the expense of the American public.

The sudden collapse of the deal comes as news organizations the world over comb through the huge Panama Papers leak that exposes how individuals take similar advantage of the cracks in international tax law to conceal their personal holdings and business dealings with offshore shell companies. The leaks are bringing a burst of fresh attention to a long-standing problem: It’s very easy, and often legal, to slip out of the taxman’s grasp by way of clever accounting.
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Founded in Brooklyn in 1849, Pfizer is one of the longest-running corporate success stories in the American economy. It has benefited from U.S. taxpayers’ investments in roads, education, scientific research, and global stability for almost 160 years, growing from $2,500 in seed money from Charles Pfizer’s father into the top-selling drugmaker in the world.

But for the past several years, Pfizer’s executives have tried desperately to move away. The company sought what’s called an inversion merger, in which two corporations combine and use accounting schemes to shift almost all of their profits into a country with low tax rates.

Pfizer tried to buy British drug titan AstraZeneca in 2014, hoping to slice a billion dollars per year off its U.S. tax bill. But it wouldn’t meet AstraZeneca’s asking price, and the would-be inversion fell apart.

But the Pfizer-Allergan announcement came after inversions had become a hot topic in the political press rather than just the financial pages. A series of high-profile corporate expatriations to duck American taxes had prompted a populist backlash, and the White House had begun explicitly shaming inverters as unpatriotic.

To put force to those words, the Obama administration began taking a series of independent steps to discourage inversions. The highly technical steps chipped away at the financial incentives that lead companies to invert in the first place.

The most recent of those came this week, leading Pfizer to abandon its latest inversion. The government didn’t act to block the merger, but rather to negate the tax benefits that were Pfizer’s primary reason for trying to shift its official headquarters abroad while continuing to operate in the United States.

One change blocks a corporate practice called “earnings stripping,” whereby inverted companies shift their corporate debts into the American tax jurisdiction at the same time that they shift their profits out of the country. Because interest payments on such debts are tax-deductible, earnings stripping effectively doubles down on the tax-avoidance at the core of inversion mergers.

And for “serial inverters” that have repeatedly used these mergers to minimize their American tax obligations, Treasury officials announced this week, some key tax and accounting questions will now work a little differently. Allergan itself is the product of multiple inversion mergers between U.S. and international drugmakers down the years.

The new rules meant that if Pfizer went ahead with the deal, Allergan would be considered by Treasury to hold a much smaller share of the total ownership of the merged firm. So small, in fact, that the merged firm would still count as U.S.-based for tax purposes.

If Pfizer believed that combining with Allergan were in its best interests in fundamental business terms — production, research and development, all the work of actually creating, manufacturing, and selling medicine — then it would have gone ahead with the deal.

But instead, after learning the merger wouldn’t shave its tax bill down, Pfizer decided to walk away — even though doing so means paying Allergan a $150 million “break-up fee.”

Read more: Obama Kills Largest Corporate Attempt Yet To Flee Overseas And Dodge Taxes | ThinkProgress

Pharmaceutical Industry: .Pfizer calls it quits on AstraZeneca

US drugmaker Pfizer said Monday it is calling off its controversial bid to acquire British rival AstraZeneca. The announcement came after a 69.4 billion-pound ($116.8 billion) offer rejected by AstraZeneca last week.
“Following the AstraZeneca board's rejection of the proposal,

Pfizer announces that it does not intend to make an offer for AstraZeneca,” Pfizer said in a statement.
Pfizer CEO Ian Read said his company's last offer represented what he believed to be the full value of the company.

Leif Johansson, chairman of AstraZeneca, said he was pleased with the retreat.
“We welcome the opportunity to continue building on the momentum we have already demonstrated as an independent company,” Johansson said.

rEAD MORE; Pfizer calls it quits on AstraZeneca | Business | DW.DE | 26.05.2014