Is vaccine hesitancy in Eastern Europe because of propaganda against Sputnik V vaccine which in effect may work better than many other vaccines?
When FPM.news contacted Svetlana, during the weekend, a women’s rights worker with RINJ Women since 2009, for a story about the allegations against Russia’s current military training exercises, she was angry, saying “nobody in Russia wants a war with anyone or anything except this horrible COVID-[causing]-virus. Please make an article talking to people about why getting vaccinated is more important,” she said as she also explained that she and her volunteers plus the people she works with in her day job were all vaccinated with the two-jab version of the Gamaleya Institute, Sputnik V vaccine. and that “none became ill with COVID“.
by Sharon Santiago and Micheal John
Svetlana, who is quite petite, all of 47 kilograms (a little more than 100 pounds) and a little taller than 1.5 meters (5 ft.) is a well-known firebrand dynamo when it comes to organizing volunteers. She is a Canadian-trained nurse practitioner and on top of her full time job she leads a group of RINJ Women medical volunteers, who currently volunteer to focus on dealing with the plight of the COVID-19-impacted elderly, shut-ins, in their homes.
“So many seniors have lost their partners to COVID-19 in and around Moscow and across the country, and they would maybe just die themselves if somebody professional did not care for them at home. Young families must not risk their family members’ lives entering homes where COVID is or has been present according to normal quarantine protocols, without full and proper PPE, and that makes visits uncomfortable because from a person a hug is expected, when there is no hug, a new and colder version of the relationship is spawned. We are building context relationships. The best we can give is comforting words with a soft, kind, voice, and good deeds, plus a hug from a plastic material, bunny-suited, mask wearing, care-giver,” she explains with a chuckle.
But among the medical workers is a newly-held esteem for a vegan-style soup (thick like a stew), made from a wide range of vegetables, ginger, some fruits like apple, and some softened nuts, and plenty of herbs and spices.
“It is delicious, and popular,” explains one of Svetlana’s volunteer workers. “Before long,” she added, “we will have more than two dozen mothers and their daughters in some cases, making this volunteer soup from Svetlana’s recipe, and local variations suited to the supply of, and preferences for, vegetables, and bringing it to the homes of shut-ins. This is the winter cure for everything,” she exclaimed with a laugh.
This volunteer work, functions two ways explains a volunteer team leader.
Svetlana explains that she lost her grandma to COVID-19, in mid-2020, her sole remaining grandparent, and she is still heartbroken. In her own exact words Sveta, explained.
“I have some advices for other medical volunteer caregivers. This is a home care assignment, not a professional clinical environment so it is OK to share in a personal context if the volunteer feels so inclined and it is indicated by the circumstances of the shut-in elderly person. Common sense is important but for me the good example is when I was trying to reach through the sadness of a lady who had lost her husband, I told her about my grief. That grandma opened up to me about her feelings after hearing mine, and she talked about the weird behaviour she caught herself doing. I told her that I talk to my grandma still every day, and that it is OK for whenever a person feels like doing that. She started more and more showing me things she had knitted for her husband and her daughter and her grandchildren while I was heating up her soup. Soon, in the home visits that followed, we became friends and she makes me feel very good how she talks to me like a granddaughter. I think we all need to feel happy and feel love again in this pandemic, not war and cruelty.”
Vaccination of the LPR. Pikhtereva. Nurses and doctors in Luhansk say “The coronavirus vaccine is well tolerated.” Read: Luhansk vaccine push slams COVID19. “Vaccines Work”, says Dr. Yulia
Published November 13, 2021 by Melissa Hemingway
Doctors in the Luhansk People’s Republic achieved a marked level of success with a fast-response vaccine drive using the Sputnik Light one-dose vaccine, according to the head of epidemiology, Alexei Semeshko. Some 7 dozen nations and autonomous regions have been using Sputnik. … Continue reading →
International Federation of the Red Cross is visiting Moscow to admire and assist the national volunteer movement which is also promoting, “Get Vaccinated”. It’s free.
Francesco Rocca, the president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has commended the Russian volunteer infrastructure that is sweeping across the country under the tutelage of domestic and global NGOs, including the Red Cross and the Red Crescent partners, plus the Kremlin which has promoted and praised the concept from the outset of the pandemic.
The scientific community has warned about the risks of very new variants in places where there is a low rate of vaccinations, particularly poorer countries.
Mr. Rocca raised those items for discussion in several interviews.
The World Health Organization has been repeatedly reminding the world of “the importance of global solidarity in addressing the crisis.”
“Supply nationalism has exacerbated the pandemic and contributed to the total failure of the global supply chain”, Dr. Tedros, head of the WHO has stated, often, since the pandemic began.
There are a lot of people who want to be vaccinated., We are on it, say doctors, nurses and medical officials of the People’s Republic of Luhansk. Read: Rate of COVID-19 Delta acceleration appears to slow in Luhansk PR thanks to Sputnik Light Vaccine campaign
Published on August 23, 2021 by Sharon Santiago
In July, the government of the People’s Republic of Luhansk launched a massive vaccine project to counter a worrying rise in COVID-19 cases caused by the wild delta variant which had reached the Donbas region hitting both Luhansk and Donetsky …
“We need to prevent vaccine nationalism, and get everyone vaccinated,” WHO leader Dr. Tedros repeats continually. Mr. Rocca agrees.
“This [Vaccine Nationalism] is a selfish approach coming from the Western community. This is really a blind approach,” said Mr. Rocca, a very kindly gentleman and a longtime Red Cross volunteer now head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, since 2017.
“It’s unbelievable that we are still not realising how much we are interconnected,” added Mr. Rocca. “This is why I call the Omicron variant the ultimate evidence.”
About the enormous and growing Russian national volunteer movement, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko said on Sunday that, the volunteer movement has significantly supported the entire state system under complex pandemic conditions.
“The volunteers helped the elderly with the housework, bring them food and medications, provide moral and psychological support to patients and their relatives. There are about 65,000 volunteer medics alone working nationwide during the pandemic, including 35,000 at medical organizations. Nowadays, volunteering is an enormous and powerful driving force uniting people of all ages from all parts of the country which demonstrated the capability to endure any trials,” he said, adding that anyone can become a volunteer now.
Additional reading. In the small People’s Republic of Luhansk (LPR), herculean efforts to vaccinate the population with the help of the Gamaleya Institute and its Sputnik V vaccine have delivered notable results without any penalty or discomfort to patients. “The coronavirus vaccine is well tolerated,” say LPR medical officials.
FPM.news got the message. The better story is as Svetlana says, “Get vaccinated and do something nice for somebody by becoming a volunteer throughout Eastern Europe.”
A look at vaccinations in Eastern Europe and why more people need to get vaccinated.
“The fundamental principal of the Sputnik V vaccine is proven according to numerous scientific papers published in the Lancet,” explains Dr. Nassima al Amouri, a regional medical director with The RINJ Foundation.
“It is a better vaccine technology than traditional immunology because it only delivers a replica of the most significant identification feature of the offending virus that the vaccine-maker wants the human body’s immune system to fight,” she said.
“Older technology delivered what amounts to the whole ‘dead carcass’ of the offending virus particle for the immune system to sniff at and then decide it is dangerous even though inactive, and a need exists to create antibodies to fight the thing, to be ready in the case where an active virus enters the body. That statement I make to lay patients as analogous to the more complicated scientific statement which is not so easily understood by patients,” Dr. al Amouri explains.
The Sputnik V vaccine in technical terms is an “adenovirus viral vector vaccine“ which is a more precise vaccination technology, now quite widely used, explains the Sputnik V manufacturers on their website.
“I explain to patients that the medical terms mean that the vaccine designers use a safe, ineffective virus, modified to carry the spike protein identifiers of the SARS-CoV-2 to the most important cells in the human body, to say, ‘Look. Watch out for this virus identification feature. This is what you will see, so don’t let it in, kill it'”, Dr. al Amouri explains.
According to scientists writing in the Lancet, healthy people respond to the genomic message of the vaccine by bolstering what are known as T-cells and by producing an army of antibodies.
“One then hopes that this army of cell defenders can fight off all of an invasion of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles. If some virus get through, their ability to do harm is limited because of the vaccine and its ability to warn the body’s defences. That’s how vaccines work,” Dr. al Amouri explains.
Dr. al Amouri explained in a Zoom call with Svetlana and several of her workers, “the methodology of the Sputnik-V vaccine is straightforward. There is nothing risky in the technology, in fact, of all the vaccines using the ‘adenovirus viral vector’ technology, the Sputnik V, in over 70 countries, has the fewest reports of significant side effects. Feeling a little malaise is a normal reaction indicating that the body has encountered something it feels needs to be fought off. The process of producing antibodies and creating stronger T-cells is a little bit tiring. That can last a few hours at some point after each and any vaccine of any kind. Malaise feelings can also happen after eating day-old Pizza, which is truly a risky proposition,” she added. “So keep it real,” she said, causing the other women volunteers to laugh and nod their heads knowingly.
“Probably, Vaccine Mandates are a good idea,” says a Russian medical microbiology scientist who wants to dodge the political discussion and deal purely with medical aspects of the pandemic.
Watch video: This nurse offers the best explanation of how to do complete hand washing during the pandemic. Hand washing is an extremely important aspect of disease prevention.
Scientific evidence says that the vaccines are very effective, more so than past vaccines in all of human history, and that they are safe. Risking COVID-19 is not safe practice, it is deadly foolhardiness.
The following is excerpted by the authors from the Lancet scientific article: “Safety and efficacy of an rAd26 and rAd5 vector-based heterologous prime-boost COVID-19 vaccine: an interim analysis of a randomised controlled phase 3 trial in Russia”
Background
“A heterologous recombinant adenovirus (rAd)-based vaccine, Gam-COVID-Vac (Sputnik V), showed a good safety profile and induced strong humoral and cellular immune responses in participants in phase 1/2 clinical trials. Here, we report preliminary results on the efficacy and safety of Gam-COVID-Vac from the interim analysis of this phase 3 trial.”
Methods
“We did a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 3 trial at 25 hospitals and polyclinics in Moscow, Russia. We included participants aged at least 18 years, with negative SARS-CoV-2 PCR and IgG and IgM tests, no infectious diseases in the 14 days before enrolment, and no other vaccinations in the 30 days before enrolment. Participants were randomly assigned (3:1) to receive vaccine or placebo, with stratification by age group. Investigators, participants, and all study staff were masked to group assignment. The vaccine was administered (0·5 mL/dose) intramuscularly in a prime-boost regimen: a 21-day interval between the first dose (rAd26) and the second dose (rAd5), both vectors carrying the gene for the full-length SARS-CoV-2 glycoprotein S. The primary outcome was the proportion of participants with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 from day 21 after receiving the first dose. All analyses excluded participants with protocol violations: the primary outcome was assessed in participants who had received two doses of vaccine or placebo, serious adverse events were assessed in all participants who had received at least one dose at the time of database lock, and rare adverse events were assessed in all participants who had received two doses and for whom all available data were verified in the case report form at the time of database lock. The trial is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04530396).”
Findings
“Between Sept 7 and Nov 24, 2020, 21 977 adults were randomly assigned to the vaccine group (n=16 501) or the placebo group (n=5476). 19 866 received two doses of vaccine or placebo and were included in the primary outcome analysis. From 21 days after the first dose of vaccine (the day of dose 2), 16 (0·1%) of 14 964 participants in the vaccine group and 62 (1·3%) of 4902 in the placebo group were confirmed to have COVID-19; vaccine efficacy was 91·6% (95% CI 85·6–95·2). Most reported adverse events were grade 1 (7485 [94·0%] of 7966 total events). 45 (0·3%) of 16 427 participants in the vaccine group and 23 (0·4%) of 5435 participants in the placebo group had serious adverse events; none were considered associated with vaccination, with confirmation from the independent data monitoring committee. Four deaths were reported during the study (three [<0·1%] of 16 427 participants in the vaccine group and one [<0·1%] of 5435 participants in the placebo group), none of which were considered related to the vaccine.”
Interpretation
This interim analysis of the phase 3 trial of Gam-COVID-Vac showed 91·6% efficacy against COVID-19 and was well tolerated in a large cohort.
“All family members above 5-years should get vaccinated. Many children are already vaccinated in the West and they did not whine and make a fuss. Eastern Europe must be shown that we are all in this together,” says NGO Doctor Nassima al Amouri. “If we do not reach a modicum of solidarity, the human race will not survive the next pandemic virus,” she added.
All family members above 5-years should get vaccinated. Vaccines for small children have arrived in several countries, more to come. Children from age 5 and up are approved for the BioNTech mRNA pediatric vaccine in a growing number of countries now. The child vaccine was invented by a woman and her husband in Germany after 20 years of research into mRNA vaccine technology.
Photo Credit: Screen Capture. Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine