OT: Pfizer vaccine and cold storage

I would imagine they will have some sort of tell-tale, which will melt above a set temperature and give the game away. Personally, when buying frozen food which is partially liquid - I reject any item which looks as if the liquid has flowed and uneven.

polygonum_on_google has brought this to us :

They have to leave the doors open?

Almost certainly there will be some sort of irreversible thermal indicator in the packaging and possibly on the vials as well. There are also ones available for subjected to high g-forces (ie dropped) and being stored upside down if that matters for a particular product.

The instructions for preparation involve thawing the vial, allowing it to come to room temperature, and adding saline to the vial before injection (the vaccine is supplied as a concentrate). The instructions state quite clearly: "Once thawed, the undiluted vaccine can be stored for up to 5 days at 2 °C to 8 °C, and up to 2 hours at temperatures up to 25 °C."

I'm sure someone at Pfizer/Biontech has measured exactly how long the vaccine is stable at body temperature.

Interesting, I thought originally people were saying that all RNA vaccines might need lower temperature storage.

Seriously, can you do that? I know very little about aircraft. Is the hold on a cargo aircraft pressurised? If not, could a door be loft open?

How where the bombs dropped during WW2? I assume this involved flying with the door open

There is more than one way to preserve it. Whether the materials/methods are suitable for vaccines, I don't know.

"the gold standard method for preservation of RNA is freezing at -80°C (Daum et al., 2011"

That explains where the idea to freeze it with dry ice came from.

Paul

No, why would you think that. Bombers have bomb bay doors, and you'd obviously fly with those closed. When you reach the target, you open those doors, then press the bomb release buttons.

Unless your bombs are externally mounted e.g. under the wings, the case for recent multi-role planes.

Use a DC10.

WWII bomber aircraft before the stratofortress were not pressurised: they used oxygen, and operation ceilings were seldom much above 25000 feet:

Avro Lancaster: "Service ceiling: 21,400 ft (6,500 m) at 63,000 lb (29,000 kg) Boeing Stratofortress: "Service ceiling: 31,850 ft (9,710 m)"

The bomb bay was not pressurised to avoid te problem of opening a pressurised compartment at altitude.

Many cargo bays are not pressurised in modern aircraft as well.

But were bombers in WW2 pressurized anyway?

I think you mean the B-29 Superfortress, not the B-52 Stratofortress. The Superfortress was pressurised.

I didn't know until recently that it could have been a Lancaster which dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. The Americans had to throw vast amounts of money at the redesign of the B-29 to allow it to carry an atomic bomb, because they didn't want a non-US aircraft to drop it! Just shows what an amazing aircraft the Lancaster was.

What I'd like to know is how these work. At work we had a system that might have got there; it would easily go +85C to -54C at 5C/min. linear with a

WW2 aircraft were at least mostly unpressurised. Stratofortress was first pressurised bomber in 1942.

You simply can't leave the doors open. The holds of most aircraft are pressurised.

FAA has some info. though this is more "we are doing something" rather than details:

Not once they had become peppered with shrapnel

The bouncing bombs were held half inside and half outside the fuselage with hydraulic motors to spin it ?backwards before release.