CDC Update

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) analyzes influenza activity and publishes key findings each week.

Key Flu Indicators

FluView.*

During the week of November 1-7, 2009, a review of key indicators found that certain indicators declined, while others continued to rise. Overall, flu activity in the United Sates remained very high. Below is a summary of the most recent key indicators:

• Visits to doctors for influenza-like illness (ILI) nationally decreased this week over last week. This is the 2nd week of national decreases in ILI after four consecutive weeks of sharp increases. (Visits to doctors for ILI is still higher than what is seen during the peak of many regular flu seasons.
• Total influenza hospitalization rates for laboratory-confirmed flu continue to climb and remain higher than expected for this time of year.
  
• The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) based on the 122 Cities Report continues to increase and has been higher than what is expected for six weeks now.
• Forty-six states are reporting widespread influenza activity at this time; This many reports of widespread activity at this time of year are unprecedented during seasonal flu.
• Almost all of the influenza viruses identified so far continue to be 2009 H1N1 influenza A viruses. These viruses remain similar to the virus chosen for the 2009 H1N1 vaccine, and remain susceptible to the antiviral drugs oseltamivir and zanamivir with rare exception.

Our inferences and predictions:
The rare exception as well as the cases of hospitalization both seem to be good candidates for increased use of peramivir (BCRX) or intravenous Relenza (GSK)/Tamiflu (RHHBY.PK).

NVAX Special Opinion

If any new investors to NVAX are panicking because of this article on Motley Fool, fear not. The Fool used to be a good source, but with their open source approach of letting anyone write articles, it has become a general bulletin board where everyone is free to dish their opinion. For instance, the author Tim Hanson has completely missed Novavax's long standing work in virus like particle (VLP) technology based vaccines for seasonal flu.
In fact NVAX is currently initiating phase II studies on comparing the dosing of its VLP based vaccine to existing flu vaccines (of other companies) {press release pdf}.

The problem with this approach is that there is no objective or comprehensive coverage of companies. Instead, we have a piecemeal approach picking on factors and comments on "absence of long term plans" -(paraphrased).

Tim Hanson says:
"I'm not here to be negative about either Novavax"

That was a funny circuitious route towards attacking a company which has very clear long term plans. Especially with long term manufacturing agreements with Cadila (india) and another company in Spain. They also have seasonal flu vaccines for long term (let me see) EVERY YEAR. Stop whining about sour grapes and actually make some real research. In addition, NVAX CEO has come to Novavax with 25 yrs big pharma experience because he saw big potential here.

Anyways, i am sitting in NVAX, long term with several long calls for next year. I am not concerned much. But what I am concerned is for small retail investors (who I was one of 3 years back) who would be misled by these opinions posing as research.

With today's search capabilities, it is quite easy to come up with a timeline of almost anything. In case of NVAX, you can check out their timeline with vaccine development and other progress here.

SVA NVAX BCRX APT

Expect moves in Sinovac (SVA), Novavax (NVAX), Biocryst (BCRX) and Alpha Protech (APT) this week and in early November. I expect most of these moves to be on the upside.

Biocryst Pharma recently received Emergency Use Authorization for Permamivir (it's IV administered antiviral for use in hospitals against H1N1 flu disease). Sinovac accounced additional orders on Tuesday morning. Novavax and Alpha Protech are solid bets, APT has true revenues from products and Novavax is producing vaccines for trials in Mexico, has joint agreements in India and other good prospects.

• Sinovac Biotech Ltd. (courtesyYahoo finance)
  

BEIJING, Oct. 27 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Sinovac Biotech Ltd. (NYSE: SVA - News), a leading provider of biopharmaceutical products in China, announced today that it has received its third purchase order for its H1N1 vaccine, PANFLU.1, from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for the national stockpiling plan. Under this purchase order, Sinovac is required to produce an additional 5.19 million doses of PANFLU.1 (15ug/0.5ml) for the Chinese central government. Out of today's announced PANFLU.1 order, Sinovac is required to complete delivery of 2.89 million doses to the appointed provincial and municipal governments by the end of this year and supply the remaining 2.3 million doses for the central government stockpiling.

Symbol	Price	Change
SVA	8.06	0.00

The latest 5.19 million dose purchase order is in addition to an initial order for 3.3 million doses and second order for 3 million doses received by Sinovac from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China on September 4, 2009 and September 30, 2009, respectively, for a total of 11.49 million doses.

Novavax, Biocryst to make big moves

Novavax and Avimex are initiating the blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial in Mexico City to evaluate the safety, immunogenicity and efficacy of Novavax's 2009 H1N1 VLP vaccine in healthy adults. Biocryst Pharma is showing lot of promise with its antiviral drug Peramivir. (after the jump)

The first stage will evaluate the vaccine's safety, immunogenicity and efficacy among 1,000 subjects, including 750 VLP recipients and 250 placebo recipients. Pending favorable results from the first stage, the second stage of the study will be initiated to evaluate the safety of the vaccine in a larger cohort of 3,000 subjects (2,000 vaccine and 1,000 placebo recipients). The primary safety and immunogenicity results are expected within 3 months of the start of this study in January 2010. If the results are clinically acceptable, they will be used to seek registration of Novavax's 2009 H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine in Mexico. These data are also expected to support development of the company's pandemic and seasonal flu VLP vaccines in other countries, including the United States.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/novavax-ge-avimex-set-mexico-h1n1-vaccine-trial-2009-10-20?siteid=yhoof2


Watch this video to find out more:
http://www.wral.com/business/story/6241972/DIRECT LINK TO VIDEO

Insurance Securitization and how it might affect cures to any fatal diseases

This post is big time speculation/prediction without any facts to back it up, really. This is, at this point of time, a flight of imagination on how conflicts of interest can develop for investors who invest in life insurance settlement policies etc.

Refer to this article on NY Times and then read comments (italics) below in context:


"Enter life settlement companies. Depending on various factors, they will pay 20 to 200 percent more than the surrender value an insurer would pay."
but this will obviously be much less than the policy benefit value. but the reporter does not even mention that.

Another quote: "That is because if too many people with leukemia are in the securitization portfolio, and a cure is developed, the value of the bond would plummet."
Using my complex math models, I can predict that investors in this class of assets will be against healthcare advances curing diseases like leukameia, cancer, etc - ie many fatal diseases. I think I will now repeat my comment: Welcome to a new class of private death panels, it used to be just insurers, but now wall st investors also join that group.