Re: Coronavirus
 

The clues are in the article ;

Prioritize means give it them first, if you can.

If non are available in the two hours, then you give it to whoever is available, not waste it.

Its happening in a lot of places, some of our local school staff are getting jabs left over from sessions, rather than it be wasted.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I’d rather they stick it in anyone’s arm rather than throw it away. Plus you don’t know the personal circumstances of the people involved they may be asthmatic or have other underlying conditions.

Once again always better to get the full facts before passing judgment, if it is the case that these are perfectly healthy people that got the jab because their aunt works at the surgery then I’ll agree it would be poor, be we don’t know.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I'm fully aware what prioritise if you can means, but of you wanted to fudge the figures your simply defrost far more than you have for appointments scheduled. This could be done under false pretences - e.g. intent to have people phone their way down the JCVI list.

If unsuccessful grab whoever is walking past.

I'm not saying they are gaming the system but it'd be interesting to know how many excess people are getting vaccinated outside the JCVI list. I bet nobody is counting. :)

FWIW I also think it's better to inject someone than throw it away. I'm only pointing out that it's possible to game the system if your intent is to have a high headline figure while "prioritising the vulnerable".

Re: Coronavirus
 

I'll say this for you, you have turned cynicism into an art form on this forum.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I do my best ;)

Another strategy might be to do some public sector workplaces:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-covid-vaccine

I guess I do admire their creative solutions. There’s no point in holding up vaccination if there are more vaccines there than infrastructure (and people identified on) the JCVI list allows. But if others take short cuts, or are slower because they aren’t taking short cuts, then I don’t think we are necessarily well placed to criticise.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

French company has announced it will give Britain priority access to its vaccine rather than France.

A French start-up has received an order from the UK for 40 million doses of its vaccine this week – with London to now be given priority access to the jabs over Paris and the rest of the EU. The vaccine is expected to be in the UK by June this year but may not be available in France until 2022. President and Chief Business Officer of biotech company Valneva, Franck Grimaud, has estimated that the first vaccines will be delivered to the UK as soon as medical trials are complete, which he believes will be as early as June 2021.

However, vaccines are only likely to be available to the EU by approximately the beginning of 2022, even though the company is based in Saint-Herblain, Pays de la Loire, France.

The Council President of the Pays de la Loire region has angrily blamed French President Emmanuel Macron for a missed opportunity to provide the vaccine to local people.


https://www.express.co.uk/news/world...lneva-jabs-spt

Re: Coronavirus
 

Would that happen to be their facility in Livingston?

Re: Coronavirus
 

I read a few weeks ago that medics were being so careful with the vials when drawing vaccine into the syringe that yield was higher than expected. Can’t find the link now, but it suggests that the pressure to find arms to inject has been there from very early on. I’m not sure it’s fairly categorised as a short cut though. Russia commencing wide-scale use of the Sputnik-V vaccine on the basis of stage 2 trials is a short cut.

---------- Post added at 16:40 ---------- Previous post was at 16:36 ----------

It is the Livingston facility, which has benefited from a government development grant as well as a thumping big order. Meanwhile the EU still hasn’t ordered anything from them. The French media, and regional politicians, are not happy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-5...ost_type=share

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

We should push for a day of 1 million vaccinations given how well it's going. Make it a competition.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Such a publicity stunt would almost certainly involve delaying vaccines to allow them to accumulate to that level. Or increasing capacity to issue them immediately upon arrival but being unable to vaccinate at that level across 7 days - on a weekly basis there's about 3 days worth at that level until at least June*. *if we trust the leaked Scottish Government data.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Then sent to Solna in Sweden for filling and exported from there. ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

I suspect Damian’s tongue was firmly lodged in his cheek at that point. ;)

We don’t need any publicity stunts, we’re already outstripping the entire world, on a per capita basis, with the exceptions of Israel, because its signed up with Pfizer for a population scale survey in exchange for rapid supply, and a couple of the Gulf states which China is using to try to garner some good PR for its Sinopharm product.

---------- Post added at 17:19 ---------- Previous post was at 17:11 ----------

The AZ vaccine was initially bottled within the EU, which is probably what Von Der Lying was using as a pretext to insinuate that AZ was exporting product from the EU to fulfil UK orders. Since the Wrexham filling plant opened, we have had a complete domestic supply chain.

After the massive PR own goal last week, it’s very unlikely the EU would attempt to intercept drug products made in the UK, to fulfil a UK order, on the pretext that it had been bottled in the EU. However, it will be a few months before the Valneva product begins to enter the UK vaccination programme and if things do start to deteriorate further in the EU the UK government has already demonstrated its willingness to intervene to ensure there is adequate protection against UK supplies being purloined (which is how AstraZeneca came to be producing the Oxford vaccine in the first place).

Re: Coronavirus
 

EU vaccine war: Now Netherlands bans Oxford jab for over-65s as EU turns on UK firm


https://www.express.co.uk/news/polit...-65s-UK-latest

In a letter to health minister Hugo de Jonge, the advisory body also claimed people with a troubled immune system should not receive the Oxford-produced jab. Their recommendation follows a growing list of European regulators that have recommended against using doses of the Anglo-Swedish firm’s vaccine in the older population. It comes despite the EU’s drug watchdog, the European Medicines Agency, giving it the green light for use in all adults across the bloc.

Re: Coronavirus
 

EU member states are now behaving like children who, when told they can’t have something, start claiming they never wanted it anyway because it’s crap.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Will there be any older people left in the EU by the time this tantrum is over:shrug:

Re: Coronavirus
 

As said before, let them crack on. We’ll be done in a few months and they won’t be anywhere near.

And when turns out that the AZ is perfectly good for the over 65’s, they’ll just look stupid.

Re: Coronavirus
 

They're committing to put it into the arms where it's proven to work. Not sure why that's child like.

---------- Post added at 21:33 ---------- Previous post was at 21:32 ----------

The proof is indeed in the pudding.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I've been reading a bit about this and it's fascinating.

We didn't just place an order for 40 million vaccines, we placed an order for 40 million MORE vaccines from this company. Altogether it makes this vaccine, from a hitherto smaller company, our joint biggest vaccine alongside the Oxford one. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55887264

One of the successes of our vaccine rollout so far hasn't just been that we got orders in quickly and in large numbers but that the ones we ordered provided to be successful. Now that could have just been luck, we were always likely to back the Oxford one for example, and Pfizer are a huge company.

But the fact we've invested so much money in a small French company based in Nantes of all places suggests someone was paying close attention to the various candidates. If this vaccine is effective, and the order of an additional 40 million along with production ramping up in Scotland suggests they think it is, then we've got more than enough vaccines to cover everyone in the U.K more than once.

I would be very interested to see how the U.K identified this company in particular and why they placed more orders for their vaccine than any other apart from the Oxford one.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I’m questioning whether they would have made the same decision had they actually had any to put in people’s arms. Given the much-vaunted EMA’s decision to recommend it for all ages, the decision by some member states to take the superfluous decision to restrict the use of something they don’t even have is curious to say the least. It looks like vaccine envy to me.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Or vaccine sovereignty or lack of trust in the EMA. Pay your money and take your choice. ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

But but but pooling and sharing and unity in strength and more Europe and and and ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

Being the forum resident cynic I did raise this with reference to Switzerland. Happy to extend this to the EU.

The good news is we are running a massive trial for them (excluding Chesterfield players and PHE staff). If proven wrong it will be evident very quickly.

Re: Coronavirus
 

By coincidence the BBC is running a package now about the AZ vaccine being used for house visits where vulnerable and shielding people haven’t been able to get out to a vaccination centre. Obviously this is much easier to do with the AZ vaccine than either Pfizer or Moderna because once those have thawed you have to use them quickly.

The AZ vaccine, and others like it (chilled rather than cryogenic storage) are going to be the workhorse vaccines in this pandemic, and not the high-tech, supercooled mRNA vaccines the EU has most access to. I’m happy for us to share our expertise and good fortune with those countries that have expressed concerns, but I really don’t know how genuine those concerns are.

To me it looks like a dead cat story designed to deflect attention away from the EU’s horrific vaccination programme failure and to stop EU citizens thinking that the UK might be in a better position than the EU - which of course is not the narrative anyone in the EU wants to deal with.

Re: Coronavirus
 

That's very nice of the state propaganda machine to do so.

I agree if real world effectiveness of the Ox/Az vaccine stands up. We disagree on whether selectively interpreting this data retrospectively is trustworthy, however a greater extent the point is moot. It's out there - 10 million doses.

Let's see how it flies. My only caveat is the decreased PCR testing by the UK Government in favour of lateral flow testing could tip the balance at very convenient timing despite not being reflective of how the vaccine is performing in the community (which ONS testing will provide).

Re: Coronavirus
 

Deals done:
AstraZeneca (400 million doses) -- fridge
Sanofi-GSK (300 million doses) -- presumably fridge, as it's based on a flu vaccine
Johnson and Johnson (400 million doses) -- fridge
BioNTech-Pfizer (600 million doses) -- supercooled
CureVac (405 million doses) -- fridge (mRNA, incidentally)
Moderna (160 million doses) -- 30 days fridge, 6 months freezer

Negotiating:
Novavax (200 million doses) -- fridge
Valneva (60 million doses) -- fridge

Re: Coronavirus
 

Very few of which are anywhere near delivering significant numbers of doses to the EU. The Pfizer vaccine is by far the biggest deal the EU has done as well as being the earliest to be ready. Within the EU, right now, if you’re lucky enough to get a vaccine in the next 2 months it is unlikely to be anything other than that one.

Incidentally the Sanofi-GSK vaccine failed to produce an immune response in over 50s and reformulation work means it won’t now produce a working product before the end of the year. For the time being Sanofi’s manufacturing capacity has been turned over to making yet more of the Pfizer-BioNTech product.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Interesting.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Indeed, and unfortunate.

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotec...vid-19-vaccine

It is adding to a sense of frustration in the French media which is also demanding to know why the French company Valneva is producing in the UK, with UK development funding and a UK order on its books, while neither the EU nor the French government has yet to conclude a deal with them.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I would suggest they read books on capitalism.

Re: Coronavirus
 

They already look stupid. :)

Interesting that they havent just gone ahead with it anyway as it seems perfectly ok for under 50 year olds.
That is surely a large block of the population in most countires, and other vaccines are available to cover the older people.

Re: Coronavirus
 

In the UK at least, over 50s are more than half of the population, and almost all covid deaths are in that age band. It’s just not useful enough.

Re: Coronavirus
 

"In mid-2019, the median age in the UK was 40.3 years, 0.2 years higher than mid-2018 and 1 year higher than mid-2009"
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...d2019estimates

Re: Coronavirus
 

In this case I’m repeating a BBC TV news report from last night :shrug: It’s possible they were referring to the adult population, as there’s no plan yet to vaccinate children.

Re: Coronavirus
 

There's a good breakdown here of when people are likely to get the vaccine in the UK and the numbers in each age category https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639

Re: Coronavirus
 

Good news

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55946912

Re: Coronavirus
 

Yes indeed. Thanks for posting that. I think the data converts us from unsure to we'll have it when offered.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Without Covid this would never have happened. I know this thread is a serious record of the forum's view of what has happened but I hope that this link to an extract of a Zoom Council meeting will make you giggle as much as I did. :D

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co...ackie-19774323

Re: Coronavirus
 

The rest of the world is finally seeing what every local news reporter has always known. Honestly the Tuesday evenings I used to lose to stuff equally as pompous as this ... :rofl:

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Off Topic Jo, READ THE RULES AND UNDERSTAND THEM :D

---------- Post added at 16:06 ---------- Previous post was at 16:03 ----------

You have no authority here jackie weaver as he's booted from the call, priceless, his ego might not recover from that

Re: Coronavirus
 

Our local health clinic now has a supply, and is doing jabs today and tomorrow.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Ah, I suspect they were referring to the over 50s plus those with health conditions. Which is over 50%.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639

Re: Coronavirus
 

Spain bans Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for over-55s as jab restricted- Latest EU snub to UK


https://www.express.co.uk/news/world...s-covid-latest

Re: Coronavirus
 

As the saying goes, Hell mend them.

Re: Coronavirus
 

It’s not an "EU snub" - it’s a country in the EU (also in Europe and Iberia, so you might as well have posted "Latest European/Iberian snub to U.K. and Sweden") following it’s sovereign medical regulators advice.

btw, it’s over 65s - they are still discussing about the over-55s.

https://english.elpais.com/society/2...-over-65s.html

Re: Coronavirus
 

Don't shoot the messenger, because you don't like the message.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

It’s a fairly cynical PR campaign aimed at reassuring the voters of Europe that the UK is being irresponsible, and they really shouldn’t compare our apparently miles-ahead vaccination programme with their clown car effort. Don’t underestimate the profound cognitive dissonance sweeping the corridors of European power at the moment. They have royally fecked up the one thing that was supposed to simultaneously prove the strength of the EU and the diminished state of the UK.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Yeah, it’s not the “EU”, it’s the individual EU member states using their individual sovereign powers...................

Bollocks, I think they all received the memo from UVDL.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Netherlands bans Oxford jab amid EU vaccine war

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/13...d-jab-over-65s

Re: Coronavirus
 

I really dont know why anyone is getting worked up about it, Im certainly not "Furious".

Let them ban it completely in the EU, and then the UK can have all of it, and watch the EU suffer further, while we point and snigger :D

I must be missing something, as these really look like more EU own goals to me.

Re: Coronavirus
 

They’re banning the use of something they don’t have, and won’t have any significant quantity of for quite some time. It’s theatre for their own masses, and really not worth our time.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Apologies if you feel that a factual correction is a personal attack - that was not the intent...

---------- Post added at 00:32 ---------- Previous post was at 00:30 ----------

They’re not banning anything - they are not going to authorise the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for the over-65s and those with weak immune systems.

Bit of a difference...

Re: Coronavirus
 

They're the decisions of individual sovereign nations not EU decisions. Ban is a pretty emotive term - I would say not sanctioned or not approved as more accurate.

Important to note that the European Medicines Agency has approved it for all adults whilst it's still not been approved in the USA or Switzerland amongst other countries. Are these countries scoring more than own goals, perhaps throwing the match?

More interesting to me is the EU approach to the Sputnik vaccine and how that might impact the bloc's relationship with Russia where it has traditionally taken an anti-Putin stance.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-new...-into-eu-orbit

Re: Coronavirus
 

Of course you would, you would argue with your own shadow if you could. ;)

The post wasnt about the USA, or Switzerland. Nice try though. :dozey:

Re: Coronavirus
 

I'm up for a discussion about the issues raised. As a discussion forum, it would probably get a tad boring if we all agreed with one another! ;)

I placed the decisions of some European countries in perspective. Whilst they've age-capped use of the AZ vaccine, they've allowed it to to be used unlike other countries who have yet to approve it.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

But you don’t dispute the substantive point - that this is political theatre designed to distract attention from an abject policy failure.

Re: Coronavirus
 

One of the Russian developers of the Sputnic V vaccine said on R4 that the V is for victory, not "5"

Re: Coronavirus
 

:tu:

Re: Coronavirus
 

I liked the old days when drugs were approved based on being safe and effective. According the The Express, how much you can annoy other countries seems to be a factor too now.

AZ isn’t a solely British company BTW, it’s joint British and Swedish company

Re: Coronavirus
 

I think the EU stance is based on covering von der loony's ponderous arse.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Indeed, however it is headquartered in the UK, and is substantially manufacturing in the UK a vaccine designed by a UK university with support from the UK government. It has become a symbol of British success in the campaign to vaccinate against Covid-19, right at the time the EU and its member states are presiding over a directly comparable failure.

It is cheap symbolism because there won’t be enough AstraZeneca vaccine available to European countries until after its efficacy in older patients is confirmed anyway, so it’s not as if they had the choice. It is also short-term political opportunism because they need something to take the shine off the British vaccination programme that’s showing them up so badly.

I agree it is a real pity the EU and its members have behaved so appallingly over the last couple of weeks. What conclusions we might draw from it all are for another thread. All we really need to keep reminding ourselves is that this is all their own nonsensical business. We are in the lead here and shouldn’t concern ourselves with the bizarre peacock strutting of those who are trying far too hard to prove they’re the ones in control.

(Edit) and I think the Express is being rather narcissistic about this - this is political theatre for domestic consumption by the electorates presently being let down by their national governments’ ongoing participation in a failed EU venture. It isn’t intended as a cross-channel middle finger (not primarily at least ... whether they hope for that as a bonus outcome is neither here nor there. We’re the ones vaccinating more than half a million people every day).

Re: Coronavirus
 

So the suggestion is that the nations (not the EU BTW, this decision is down to individual countries, the EMA has approved for all over 18) are deliberately withholding a vaccine from the most vulnerable for political gain? That’s the kind of thing that brings down governments..

Here’s the EMA approval by the way - https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documen...rsement_en.pdf Interestingly, Oxford Biomedica in the UK is an approved manufacturer but not Cobra Biomanufacturing.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Yes and no. They are withholding approval for something they don’t actually have, so they are not really preventing them from getting it. What they are doing is spinning their poor political decisions as safety-conscious caution.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I think we're bordering upon the murky realm of conspiracy theories here. Has every medical approval body in the EU really been instructed to pend approval of the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in elderly people so as to make the EU's purhasing decisions look somewhat better? Perhaps every scientist has been given hush money and given a secret £200k pension to keep quiet about this matter?

Like most conspiracy theories, the truth is rather more boring. There is insufficient data available at the moment that provides these scientists with the confidence they seek.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Here's an interesting chart from today's FT which shows how far ahead AstraZeneca is in its orders, globally.

The unsuccessful Sanofi/GSK vaccine has quite a lot of orders but none from the EU. Curevac's orders seem to be nearly all from the EU but I believe the UK has now ordered 50m doses from the company.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

In Andrews opinion, it would seem so.

Have a read : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/55919245

Re: Coronavirus
 

Another puff piece from the state broadcaster. I am stunned.

I'm not sure it's correct to categorise it as "right vs wrong" - in the absence of data it becomes a risk based approach which as I'd said previously varies from country to country depending on what is (or isn't) available.

The United States similarly haven't approved the vaccine at all until ongoing trials are complete. Is it really a conspiracy against Great Britain? I suspect not. However it keeps people talking about something other than the death toll I suppose.

Interestingly there are no signs (yet) of a difference in case reduction in the over 80s vs the population at large and the ONS survey has the over 70s flatlining at prevalence around 1% for weeks now.

It's certainly going to be a big couple of weeks coming up for the UK experiment.

Re: Coronavirus
 

No, the different countries regulatory bodies have reached different conclusions from the data available - that is their job, to reach independent conclusions rather than just follow others (otherwise, what are they there for).

The challenge for all bodies involved is trying to reach a decision of what data is available - the USA has different criteria from the U.K. which has different criteria from other countries.

For a related example, my brother in law is trying to get a treatment for FOP (Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva) approved in various countries - he has had it approved by the FDA, but the U.K., EU, Japan, and some other countries haven’t approved it yet, because they want more evidence on certain aspects.

It’s not binary, it’s shaded.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Do we have one...;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

It's political.

---------- Post added at 19:58 ---------- Previous post was at 19:56 ----------

Yes but it mostly broadcasts on behalf of the EU.

Re: Coronavirus
 

So are you saying that the FOP treatment my Brother in Law is trying to get approved in the U.K. (already approved in the USA) is being held up for political reasons?

Re: Coronavirus
 

It's not relevant to the debate.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Got a phone call from a very nice lady this morning asking if I wanted to get my Covid jab on Monday, which I gratefully accepted of course.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Can you indicate to me where I've expressed this opinion? :confused:

---------- Post added at 20:59 ---------- Previous post was at 20:58 ----------

https://www.ft.com/content/e9bbd4fe-...3-be64140a3f36

Re: Coronavirus
 

They do have it now
https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/1...and-in-europe/

Re: Coronavirus
 

:clap:

Re: Coronavirus
 

In far smaller quantities than originally anticipated, which is the whole point. There is a tiny amount of AZ to go round the whole EU, and somewhat more Pfizer. Withholding approval makes absolutely no practical difference to the rollout in any EU country, given the quantities involved.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

If they believe what their governments want them to believe, they are thinking that the crazy Brits are only so far ahead because they have overspent on a vaccine that is unproven and less efficacious than the one the glorious EU is making for them in Belgium. Better to do it right than do it fast. All hail the EU.

Or something like that.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I can't imagine they're impressed at the slow speed of vaccinations in the same way that we're not thrilled with our track and trace.

Re: Coronavirus
 

They're probably asking if they can switch their AstraZeneca order for the one they state they can develop for the Autumn, while simultaneously asking the EU to iron out what "best effort" means.

Re: Coronavirus
 

So, different countries having different criteria for approving treatments isn’t relevant to this debate?

OK, then...

Re: Coronavirus
 

(Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva) is still not relevant to covid vaccines, even if you wait till 3 hours after bed time ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

I suspect that if it challenges the conspiracy theory that Ursula von der Leyen got scientists in various EU countries to age cap use of the AstraZeneca vaccine then some will wish it sidelined ;)

---------- Post added at 10:32 ---------- Previous post was at 10:28 ----------

The BBC is now reporting the news story that the FT broke late yesterday.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55967767

Re: Coronavirus
 

Yup ... well the Oxford lab that developed the original vaccine is already prepared to work up a variant. They have previously said that could be ready for use by autumn. I’m curious whether a vaccine targeted at SA covid would also be fully effective against the original though.

Re: Coronavirus
 

With the seasonal flu vaccines they can use a mix of vaccines, rather than a single one. Same could go for Covid.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Do they mean the original South African variant or do they mean the highly transmissible UK variant that developed the same mutation as the SA variant? It’s easy to lose track in all the vaccine spin.

If it is the latter it certainly explains the door to door testing to find cases.

Re: Coronavirus
 

We had a team call the week before last and in the call were people from Belgium, France, Austria, Sweden, Germany, The Netherlands and of course the UK. Two of the team have had vaccinations, one German and one UK, both due to being in risk groups.

The rest of us can’t wait for ours. On the whole AZ vaccine thing, we get the technical reasons why there’s a delay. Two of the team are working with the sites in Belgium and The Netherlands to fine tune the manufacturing. In general, they were happy for us in the UK and the progress made, noting, in the worst case, that when we’re done, it’s pretty likely that production will then feed their local demands.

The general feeling was that each country should have gone their own way in approving and buying the vaccine and that a centralised approach is not nimble enough for this type of situation. The political fallout at a local level is the biggest outcome of this.

There is a degree of vaccine nationalism, especially from my German colleagues who were definitely bigging up the BioNTech vaccine!

My Dutch buddy did say that it was about time the UK did something right which made me laugh (I don’t take these things personally - a criticism of how we have run things is not a criticism of me)

In all, pretty pragmatic. If we’re looking for someone to blame then it’s national government, followed by Astra Zeneca, followed by the EMA/EC. The UK doesn’t feature.

Of course, poor polling. This was a small group of well educated people who understand the underlying issues. Things might be different with the wider population.

Re: Coronavirus
 

They mean the SA mutation which although shares the N501Y variant but also the E484K one.

https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov...d-19-variants/

Re: Coronavirus
 

This was on the news this morning, saying the jab might not prevent you from getting a mild infection. So what?

You’re already 99.2% unlikely to die from the virus without any vaccine, if the vaccine means you stay out of hospital but get the sniffles and a cough then it’s good enough.

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