Forget the variants, things are going well; but beware of the J and J vaccine when the EBS plant is finally authorized

  In the past week in the U.S. from the WaPo

New daily reported cases rose 0.1% 

New daily reported deaths fell 15.7% 

Covid-related hospitalizations rose 5.3% Read more

Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 4%.

The number of tests reported fell 4.9%  from the previous week

Once FDA authorizes the Emergent BioSolutions plant, tens of millions of doses that were produced there during the period of rampant mismanagement may be released for use by American citizens or others.  It appears that J and J thought they would be able to ship out 20 million of these doses by now, but FDA held them up.  

Will FDA later relent? Who will receive them? From today's WaPo:

The last time Johnson & Johnson publicly pledged to produce an additional 24 million doses this month was on March 31. Since then, the company in public statements has said only that it will meet a target of 100 million doses delivered by the end of May.

The company did not respond Friday to questions about why it has dropped the April pledge.

Johnson & Johnson has an unknown volume of doses prepared and ready to distribute once the Emergent plant does win certification.

“The company continues to work closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration toward” manufacturing certification at Emergent’s Baltimore facility, Johnson & Johnson spokesman Jake Sargent said in an email Friday. “The Company expects to deliver nearly 100 million single-shot doses of its coronavirus vaccine to the U.S. Government by the end of May.”

I forgot to mention that what really made soldiers sick in 1998-2001 was the anthrax vaccine that had been made during a time the plant was found to have been way out of compliance.  Nine million doses were scuttled but 2 million were used.  Releasing those 2 million bad doses may have been the biggest mistake FDA ever made, up to that point.