Coronavirus

[GrimUpNorth]

Originally Posted by Hugh

https://www.aol.co.uk/news/stanley-j...UWUTQSLSisQpL5

Wonder if glancing in the estate agents window on your way to the beach counts?

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by Maggy

I am not taking part in any silences or clapping. I'm not patting this government on it's back particularly for the shabby way they are treating the nurses when if they had locked down at least a month earlier more lives might have been saved. Closing the borders was the FIRST thing they should have done.The only thing they got right was supporting finding a vaccine which was the very least thing they have done. The ONLY people who deserve any accolades are the key workers which is better dealt with by paying them a decent wage and hopefully a bonus.

Didn't Whitty advise AGAINST an early lockdown?

If that was the scientific advice, then you cannot correctly blame the government for getting it wrong. Whitty said:

"...if we go too early, people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over time".

Wasn't it the World Health Organisation that was advising against closing the borders because "evidence shows that restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions"?

The government had a lot to weigh up in those early days and was receiving conflicting advice due to the many unknowns, not to mention fears for the economy. Blaming the government for anything that went wrong is a cheap shot.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Didn't Whitty advise AGAINST an early lockdown?

If that was the scientific advice, then you cannot correctly blame the government for getting it wrong. Whitty said:

"...if we go too early, people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over time".

Wasn't it the World Health Organisation that was advising against closing the borders because "evidence shows that restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions"?

The government had a lot to weigh up in those early days and was receiving conflicting advice due to the many unknowns, not to mention fears for the economy. Blaming the government for anything that went wrong is a cheap shot.

Absolute nonsense Old Boy, anything to deflect from the idea the Government made mistakes. One year on, same old OB.

What Whitty’s public statements on early/later lockdown were made are irrelevant. He’s not going to go out and publicly say something against Government policy. By that point the decisions have been made and lines agreed, unless he fancies resigning.

Pointing to discredited WHO advice is a red herring and by mid-March many other countries were going against it.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Indeed. But the EU's approach to this opportunity has been entirely belligerent and hostile. And in public at that. That kind of behaviour needs to be rebuffed, imo.

Had the EU come to the UK and quietly asked if we could help them out, then I would have expected a an accommodation with 'our European friends".

However, Macron and Merkel publicly trashed AZ vaccine to the extent that there is major public resistance to that vaccine.

The above said, I'm sure that the UK government will offer something to the EU, which they don't deserve.

In relation to the above, an interesting article appeared in yesterday's Torygraph, written by Charles Moore. The thrust of the article is:

1. We have enough AZ vaccine to meet our 2nd dose needs;

2. We are vulnerable to EU action on 2nd dose Pfizer needs;

3. The UK should bail the EU out as there will be returns for us.

The European Union wants to grab supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine, including those from the Halix factory in Leyden, Holland. This is particularly rich, since Halix’s production success owes much to a team sent over at Christmas by Kate Bingham’s Vaccine Task Force. The company was lagging behind the production of the same vaccine in Oxford. It needed our help to achieve the necessary scale by installing 1,000-litre bio-reactors.

Britain was able to step in because it was about five months ahead of EU plans for vaccine deployment. Its assistance was good both for this country and for the EU. This is part of the context in which the EU, so desperate to avoid blame for its own sloth and maladministration, now threatens to break contracts and deprive Britain of vaccines coming out of Halix and other continental suppliers.

Almost everyone here agrees that the EU’s behaviour is disgraceful, and that Britain is within its rights. Even inside the EU, public opinion is dismayed. How best, though, to react?

I would tentatively suggest that this country is in a position to be super-nice. We are way ahead of Europe, and we already have enough AstraZeneca vaccine to administer the second doses we need. In the slightly longer term, everything seems to be on track for our plentiful supply of Novovax (60 million doses) and Valdema. So long as Europe sticks by its promise to deliver the second doses of Pfizer-BioNTech our vulnerable need, we should consider helping.

Obviously, it is our absolute duty to vaccinate all vulnerable British residents first; but if that duty is discharged, is it essential that we rush forward at the same pace to vaccinate everyone else? We already have enough to cover “priority groupings” 1 to 9. The drive to get every 25-year-old vaccinated by the summer is good propaganda but will have little impact on death and infection rates if our vulnerable are already safe.

There is a moral case for helping the EU. Britain has the capacity to help rescue millions of elderly on the Continent and thus prevent thousands of deaths by offering some of its own vaccines.

There is an economic case, too. Even when we become well protected here – a day which is not far off – we shall not be able to recover economic normality if our neighbours continue to be locked down. We could free Europe from that curse. If it can be done, it will be the best lead we have given to Europe since 1945.

[jfman]

Millions of elderly? Even Professor Pantsdown wasn’t that much of a doom-monger.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by jfman

Millions of elderly? Even Professor Pantsdown wasn’t that much of a doom-monger.

You're weird!

[jonbxx]

Originally Posted by jfman

Is the Pfizer data from Israel not supporting that it reduces transmission?

The simple answer is 'sort of/maybe' at this point. What is known is that the Pfizer vaccine reduces symptomatic and, importantly, asymptomatic infections. There also seems to be some good evidence coming out that the virus is cleared more quickly in infected vaccinated people.

If you think about how you get infected with SARS-COV2, you need to get close enough to someone who is shedding virus and breathe in virus particles in a high enough dose. Symptomatic people are a huge issue and they will coughing away and shedding a lot more virus in to the air so not only is virus coming out, it's getting forced out at speed (evolution is great!) BUT, at this stage, if you are symptomatic, in all likelihood you are going to think 'Uh oh, COVID' and isolate and get tested. Also, masks will help catch the droplets being sprayed out by a symptomatic person.

Logically, an asymptomatic person will be less infectious as they aren't coughing but the evidence is weak right now on how much less infectious they are. Kids are more likely to be asymptomatic, hence the in school testing going on right now (I have a big stack of test kit boxes on my dining room table right now for home testing of the kids) Te downside of asymptomatic people is that they are not isolating - they are merrily going about their way shedding virus. What we need to know is what the 'R' value is for an asymptomatic person and that isn't clear right now.

So, vaccines seem to reduce the numbers of people actively spreading SARS-COV2 by coughing and the numbers of people unwittingly spreading infection and the infective period seems less so, in all likelihood, vaccines will reduce transmission as there are less people spreading the virus. What is less clear is how infectious you are if you are vaccinated but infected. This is one of the reasons why the Government is asking vaccinated people to not go crazy (there are other behavioural reasons too of course)

[Hom3r]

I had my Oxford AstraZenecia jab on Monday morning.


I woke up on Tuesday feeling like I had a cold, and just rundown, my Brother in-law had his just before me, but he felt like crap.


This morning we are both getting back to normal, and one step closer to family hugs.

[joglynne]

Originally Posted by Hom3r

I had my Oxford AstraZenecia jab on Monday morning.


I woke up on Tuesday feeling like I had a cold, and just rundown, my Brother in-law had his just before me, but he felt like crap.


This morning we are both getting back to normal, and one step closer to family hugs.

I had my 2nd Pfizer Vaccination 8am yesterday morning. Arm painful overnight and still tender this morning but other than that I feel fine.

At last I can add the 2nd jab to my Covid Symptons Study app. Worth having a look at the results of the study if you haven't come across it before.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/

[nomadking]

EU is getting a bit paranoid.
Link

Meanwhile, 29 million AZ doses have been inspected in a raid in Italy.
The Italian government said the health squad of the military police had gone to "verify" batches at a plant in Anagni, near Rome, last weekend after a request by the European Commission.


The plant has a contract with AstraZeneca to fill the vials with the vaccine and label them - known as "fill and finish". The plant will do the same for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is also approved for use in the EU.


La Stampa newspaper reported that the UK was a possible destination for some of the doses but a UK government official said it was not expecting such a delivery. The Italian government said "the batches that were inspected were all aimed for Belgium".

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by jfman

Absolute nonsense Old Boy, anything to deflect from the idea the Government made mistakes. One year on, same old OB.

What Whitty’s public statements on early/later lockdown were made are irrelevant. He’s not going to go out and publicly say something against Government policy. By that point the decisions have been made and lines agreed, unless he fancies resigning.

Pointing to discredited WHO advice is a red herring and by mid-March many other countries were going against it.

Same old argumentative jfman.

It is a fact that Whitty said that, and if you remember, the government has always said that they were following scientific advice.

The WHO advice may have been discredited subsequently (if you say so) but the fact is, that’s the medical advice that was there.

Government decisions? Yes. Medical advice at the time? Yes.

What other countries were doing, frankly, is irrelevant.

[papa smurf]

Originally Posted by nomadking

EU is getting a bit paranoid.
Link

Better keep an eye on the Belgian border to see if the krauts are amassing troops /panzer divisions

[jfman]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Same old argumentative jfman.

It is a fact that Whitty said that, and if you remember, the government has always said that they were following scientific advice.

The WHO advice may have been discredited subsequently (if you say so) but the fact is, that’s the medical advice that was there.

Government decisions? Yes. Medical advice at the time? Yes.

What other countries were doing, frankly, is irrelevant.

I’m not being argumentative I’m simply pointing out you are contributing palpable nonsense. Did the Government ignore SAGE advice to lockdown around 11th March? Yes. Did they ignore similar in September? Yes.

You’re quoting one man on Government payroll and giving that greater weight than the scientific advisory groups the Government appointed to give advice. Ministers make decisions based on (or against) that advice at their own discretion.

Originally Posted by papa smurf

Better keep an eye on the Belgian border to see if the krauts are amassing troops /panzer divisions

Commando comics called - could they have their out-dated language back, please?

Originally Posted by Hugh

Commando comics called - could they have their out-dated language back, please?

Nein, but you can have this pineapple, Fritz.