Re: Coronavirus
 

I guess it depends what criteria you used to big up a vaccine on. For ease of storage and cost, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine wins. But for tackling the new variants, the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine currently wins.

Re: Coronavirus
 

The thing is there's no guarantee it will keep anyone out of hospital, or prevent death, as the sample size was 2000 healthy adults. The data doesn't exist to say either way.

Anything that indicates a belief that it'll perform better in people with worse immune systems - the elderly, those with pre-existing conditions who weren't included in the study - is entirely hypothetical.

---------- Post added at 12:04 ---------- Previous post was at 12:02 ----------

An ineffective vaccine ultimately won't resolve the issue of lockdowns, social distancing and greater social and economic restrictions on their societies. An ineffective or partly effective vaccine against a virus running wild in the community is only likely to generate escape mutants in the long run that are resistant to the vaccine. It's debatable whether we'd be better off just running with herd immunity at the start compared to a half-baked attempt.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Germans love stuff made (or in this case invented and made) in Germany. They see it as a hallmark of quality. To be fair, in many cases, they have a point. Wrong a German consumer and you will know about it ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

For those who are mildly curious, I have a number of friends either elderly enough or vulnerable enough to have been vaccinated in the last few days. All of them, whether in north west England or central Scotland, were given the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Because we don’t know the impact of Long COVID yet - it seems to affect those who haven’t been ill enough to be hospitalised as well.

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n132 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3026

Re: Coronavirus
 

Just booked my jab online having received my letter. :)

I had the choice of any day any time locally.

Tuesday lunchtime for me.

Re: Coronavirus
 

https://www.ft.com/content/82534b15-...7-de674b11079c
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-55975052
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-...ction-12211970

Re: Coronavirus
 

All eyes on the UK to find out what the vaccine actually does then. The biggest clinical trial in the world.

Re: Coronavirus
 

The evidence available in the UK seems to more-or-less concur with that coming out of South Africa. It lessens severity of disease among those infected with the SA variant but doesn’t necessarily prevent it. There’s no doubt a targeted update of the vaccine is now highly desirable, however in the meantime there is still an overriding public health goal, which is to control disease so people aren’t dying of it and they aren’t filling our hospitals so that people end up dying of other things going untreated. The programme must continue at speed, with what we have available.

It looks to me as if the national vaccination programme, once complete, is likely to start again from step 1 just as soon as the modified vaccine is ready. The important thing is we know the Oxford ‘recipe’ works; it’s now just a matter of substituting the updated genetics.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I’ve not seen anything scientific to suggest it might prevent severe outcomes - the sample in South Africa was on healthy individuals with no comorbidities. As Pierre frequently points out the odds of severe outcomes in these groups are extremely low.

There’s understandably a lot of PR floating around on what people would expect or hope to see, but I’ve not seen any evidence for it.

Back to square one in Autumn isn’t the outcome I’m sure most would have hoped for, especially if we are unable to meaningfully ease restrictions over the summer due to the risk of further mutations that evade vaccine response.

I do wonder, as the Government will have had prior sight to this information as it evolves, and you’ve said before these “aren’t developed in a vacuum”, whether it’s possible Government knew vaccine efficacy was irrelevant anyway when they started pushing it out as quickly as possible. A Great British success story, and we could have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for those pesky mutations!

Re: Coronavirus
 

I think “vaccine efficacy was irrelevant anyway” is a bit of a leap. If you’re not careful you’re going to start sounding like you almost need it all to go wrong, you know, as if a national disaster is an essential component of your self-validation, or something ...

Re: Coronavirus
 

I try to avoid the British press if I can as slightly more objectivity can be found.

There’s certainly been question marks before now around what real world performance will be. I’m sure you’d I agree I certainly can’t be accused of being Captain Hindsight as I’ve voiced these before.

I’d be very pleased to be proven wrong as real world data emerges but I remain sceptical to say the least. Lockdown should now aim to eliminate the SA/UK2 variants.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Last thing the vaccination campaign needs is a minister feeling the need to declare a vote of confidence in the jabs....

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

It can sometimes come across like a football club owner declaring confidence in a failing manager whilst he's scrambling to find his successor.

On the other hand, what should a minister do if asked the question?