UKH

They are going to screw this up too aren't they? How long before we find 300000 doses wasted because the fridges don't work or something?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/03/nhs-staff-no-longer-front-que...

I know its trendy to give anything new a kicking before its even started or rolled out, but way to go to sow negativity into people's minds.

Why make the anti vaxxer's job easier?

I'm not kicking the vacinne but the government,  who started screwing things up a while ago.

How?

I'm not an anti vaxxer, but I also don't believe that this new vaccine is guaranteed to be safe. Looks like pfizer and the government aren't 100% either. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-pfizer-vaccine-legal-...

"The government are incapable of organising the necessary logistics" is far from kicking the vaccine. Remember, these are the people who didn't realise how important ferries were in shipping goods across *checks notes* 20 miles of sea. I'm almost certain they'll struggle with cold-chain dependent transport and distribution. 

I'm not sure there's anything wrong with the priority order there, to be honest - I think that's the Guardian looking for something to moan about.

However, this isn't a good look:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55177948

"Dr Fauci: The UK 'was not as careful' as US in vaccine approval"

It's likely that the UK government have been desperate to get this first, thinking that looks like a win (and they did spew some crap about it only being achievable thanks to Brexit, which is a straight forward lie: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/55163730 ). But getting it first may actually reduce confidence as it can look as if it's rushed.

I'm not sure it really is rushed in any unsafe way - but we really don't want it to look as if it is - good uptake is going to be critical if we're to achieve herd immunity in the spring or summer.

Unfortunately because of the storage issues with this vaccine it is going to be logistically difficult to run out smoothly...would have been a lot easier if one of the other vaccines that can be stored in a normal fridge had got the go ahead first....but Im sure the other vaccines won’t be far behind...

Am I missing something because when I read the article all it said was NHS staff were being pushed down the queue to deal with over 80s, care home residents and care home staff first (which is inline with the vaccine task force’s guidance).

I’d hardly call that messing things up. I’d say it’s good practice.

The government can be accused of many mistakes, but not with the vaccine.

- most doses ordered per capita

- a range of different vaccines and technologies ordered

- first approval in the world

I could go on.

Besides, given the partisan nature of the guardian you may as well be quoting from the daily Mail.

There will be errors. It's a massive under taking, even those who ship delicate goods globally for a living, 24/7/365, make mistakes sometimes and have wastage, damaged goods, spoilage etc.. The key things is the system learns as it progress and the vast majority still reaches the end user. 

There's a big difference between a paper that expresses a political leaning and one that outright lies in pursuit of its political agenda.

"By Chris Morris Reality Check correspondent, BBC News"

As in 'The Day Today' Chris Morris...?

It was more the "we don't know when the next order is coming" bit that caught my eye 

Play the ball, not the man...

I don’t disagree with you John, but the article hardly gives the government a fair hearing on this does it.

The government ensuring that over 80s, care home residents and care home workers are prioritised is something to be praised.

Instead the article (and the OP) insinuates that this is an example of the government messing up somehow.

Im not trying to defend the government here, but given how critical maximising uptake will be we should be giving credit where credit is due to the government. The last thing anyone should be doing right now is further undermining faith in the vaccine/ the governments roll out of the vaccine at such a critical time.

NHS bosses said the 800,000 doses that comprise the UK’s first consignment from Pfizer’s manufacturing plant in Belgium may be “the only batch we receive for some time”, raising questions about how soon further supplies will arrive.

Brexit? 

I think the reason for the quick regulatory turnaround is that MHRA have been working closely with all the virus developers, checking their progress as they have progressed through development and trial. So the results are not new to them, and it's really a formal acceptance of the finalised results set.

If I wanted to expedite the introduction of a new drug, that's what I would have done, whilst trying to ensure I remained independent. It's a semi-collaborative approach that is used in other critical spheres of endeavour.

My tongue was firmly in my cheek... I just thought it was fantastically ironic that the 'reality check correspondent' should have the same name as the creator of one of the seminal 'fake news' satire shows...

"When's the vaccine coming?"
"We need the vaccine"
"I want to go back to normal"
"The vaccine can't come soon enough"

[vaccine approved]

"That was a bit quick"
"I'm not sure I want it"
"The government will mess it up"

Jesus wept. What, the actual f*$k, do you want to hear?

I think the government has been relatively transparent that we won’t get all of the vaccine at once and there will be limitations in supply.

It’s not made in the UK and it’s not made by a UK company so we’ll be relying on whatever was agreed with Pfizer at the time of purchase.

The EU and individual European countries have also pre-ordered the vaccine so I imagine that we might be able to draw down on our stocks sooner than planned if their approval is delayed for whatever reason.

As for the poster who suggested Brexit would have something to do with it - grow up. You know as well as I do that it won’t make any difference.

We're British, dammit. Moaning is the national pastime...

Read the news: the swivel-eyed loon JRM & the idiot Williamson have been crowing that the rapid approval are 'because Brexit - hoorah for Brexit'. That's what the poster was reporting on.

And we know that’s rubbish. The vaccine was approved within the EU framework. 
 

But the claim that Brexit will cause delays in supplies of the vaccine is equally rubbish. 
 

Brexit has nothing to do with Covid in the context of the vaccine. So I say once again to those insinuating that it does - grow up.

I think it's rather likely to be safer than getting COVID, myself.

Yeah, I don't think it has been rushed (at least as far as I, a total layman, can tell) - I just think it's really important to avoid giving the impression that it might have been.

... I’m going to repeat the most common trope from anti vaxexers anyway.

?

Absolutely nothing in this world is 100% safe.  Never has been and never will be.

Totally agree, over 80's are highest risk. We'll all get it (the vaccination..) eventually. My wife is an MD, exposed to COVID patients these days pretty regularly and with PPE, infections in hospital are now rare. I'm sure she'd say vaccinate the over 80's before her.

You'd better have a word with Rees-Mogg and Williamson, then, rather than directing your ire at posters here, which is what you appear to be doing.

Can I just ask you to clarify which poster here you think suggested Brexit had anything to do with it?

Ed S?

The ideas are good, but the proof is in the pudding. Having cold-chained samples back from the arctic and the alps at -80, it's not the easiest of tasks to do. 

I thought the virus was developed by the Umbrella Corporation not Pfizer; are you saying the MHRA are in on it?

What has science ever done for us? Potentially NSFW

youtube.com/watch?v=Alryavu9D5k&

It is all going wrong already. Pfizer just announced they’ll be delivering 50% less due to supply chain problems. 

Not that surprising, the supply chains are complicated and they probably haven't got a lot of slack in them. New drug launches or process changes are normally preceded by months of stock building to avoid this sort of thing, which would not have been possible here. 

I've vaccinated my child with all the common childhood vaccines and I'm mostly for vaccination, however I'm not in a hurry to get this vaccine. Currently isolating because my son had a temperature and still has a cough awaiting covid test results. Part of me hopes we do have it and gain a few months immunity. I'll pass my own judgment on the safety of the vaccine when a whole bunch of people in front of me in the queue have had it if that's OK. 

Sounds perfectly sensible to me. 
 

If you imimmunise care home patients and inpatients and outpatients over 80, you basically target the people who are likely to be presenting at hospitals in large numbers.

I would have thought it’s fairly easy to get 1000 people vaccinated in 6 hours if you plan enough out patients in advance. Once you’ve divvied out the inpatient and care home doses, you do the outpatients. Then you have a priority list of local NHS workers standing by to do at the end of the day if the outpatient numbers don’t total up. 
 

Stick the thawed vaccine in cold storage and transport to care homes by motorcycle courier. 
 

I can’t see it be very complicated at all. Especially if the military are involved. 

It doesn’t matter one jot what I think, it’s your choice to make and I respect that.  I would fight against any attempt to remove that individual choice.

I was pointing out that stating a vaccine isn’t 100% safe is an absolutely standard anti-vaccine technique.  Nothing is 100% safe and everything in this world carries risk.  I think it’s worth spending the extra words to properly explain a position than to give something so commonly misused.  I’ve stated repeatedly that I don’t think mass immunisation of children should happen until relevant longitudinal studies are complete, because the direct medical risk is so small and there’s always a risk with something new.   I think this will happen naturally given the supply/demand situation.

I don’t think it’ll be necessary. I can’t see many people under 40 being vaccinated. If 20-30% of people are asymptomatic and the younger they are the more likely they are to be asymptomatic, it seems classrooms are being shut down almost daily due to outbreaks, by the time the top age groups have been vaccinated the under 30s will be naturally immune. 
 

No references, or graphs or anything I’m afraid, just a logical extension of what we are seeing at the moment. 

Another scenario is mutated strains keep coming back and we have to vaccinate every year like we do with the flu - I'm just tentatively putting this forward as I know sweet f.a. all about virology - not that this stops many people.

We’ll see.  I think we’re 6 to 9 months to soon to know what the long term future of living with endemic covid looks like.  It would be great if you’re right 

But how accurate is it?  We don’t know how long naturally acquired immunity lasts; we don’t know how long vaccine induced immunity lasts; we don’t know if vaccine-immunity-breaking variants of the spike protein are accessible by mutation.  It’s really early days and we just have to see how it goes.

More shambles....sadly expected! 

The NHS Trust where I work is on its knees.....so many staff are positive and 8 out of 10 wards are now covid wards. We can't get agency staff and staff have had to cover other wards.....hence the spread. The 'rules' change daily.....staff who were isolating a few weeks ago when exposed are now told to go in....we have had ward staff get positive result texts whilst they are on shift.....its an absolute and total mess.....patient care is absolutely compromised!

I watched this last night while painting nice flagstone bases for my legions of new Skaven Clanrats.   youtube.com/watch?v=jt8cEDd3tSc&, it's Dr John Campbell's half hour focus piece on the new vaccines.  It's well worth your time if you'd like to learn more about the various processes that have gone into the approval of this vaccine.

Interestingly he says we got it faster because of some obscure bit of legislation some past government built into our relationship with the EU whereby we could approve medicines outside the EU framework in an emergency situation.  So not BREXIT but a sort of cousin whereby some mandarin had said "The UK shall not be subject to the EU rules in this circumstance", so it's a pretty good bit of BREXIT propaganda material for someone who might want to spin it that way.   He was very careful to be apolitical in his presentation of this.  Apparently the EU committee to consider the safety of this virus is not meeting till 29th December, and as he said that's pretty suprising and will inevitably lead to avoidable deaths.

I remember posting links to Dr John Campbell back in February or something and thinking I'd be taken to task for promoting 'some guy off youtube', but since then I have spent probably a hundred hours in his company as he calmly, compassionately and sensibly talks through all things COVID.  FWIW he's a recently retired nurse from Carlisle, and I think he deserves some sort of medal for his work over the course of the pandemic.  He's also just put his physiology and pathophysiology textbooks up on the internets for free, presumably at expense to himself, for international public health benefits.  They are here if anyone is interested: http://159.69.48.3/ 

So far the only mutation that’s happening is in the s-protein and the numbers of ‘spikes’ and this is the protein that binds to the ACE receptors and make it deadly. The vaccines target this s-protein. If the virus mutates and loses the s-protein it stops being a deadly virus and the vaccine doesn’t need to work. 
 

At least that’s my layman’s understanding of it. 
 

I think they’re being very cautious because they think if people believe they’re immune once they’ve had it, we end up with a two tier society, and lockdowns will be impossible to police and manage. I think we are already heading that way. My next door neighbours ‘had a cough’ in February. Since then, they’ve acted as if they’re immune. Not even tested for Covid. 

I think if they spent a fraction of what they did on the election with PR pros to make a cogent case for virus control, vaccination in general and these vaccines specifically then we wouldn't be blundering toward another self inflicted disaster.

Jk

We don’t, but people who recovered from SARS have an immune response 16 years later. 
 

They’re being cautious to manage behaviour. 

Which Trust is this? 

How long are you going to wait, as if there were some odd side effects which only become apparent 5-10 years later you will be hoping more of us go ahead of you.

I read on full fact that the Ebola vaccine had to be stored at the same temperature as this one. Maybe it’s quite common. Maybe a lot of drugs are like that. Maybe it’s fairly standard in that industry. Perhaps everything will be alright in the end. 

The comments about Brexit and “for some time...”, is the implication that if there is no trade deal then our ability to import the Pfizer vaccine in large quantities would be constrained?

I have some experience of regulation of chemicals, not medicines, but there are emergency provisions in such legislation which allow EU MS to approve particular products outside of normal procedures, theses are time limited but not the day dream of a mandarin but something the EU has foreseen and acted on ahead of time. All EU MS enjoy the same provisions.

A measurable immune response is not necessarily immunity from infection

There's definitely people now getting covid for a second time - many more than the handful of cases that have been reported in the media would suggest. I've personally spoken to two in the past couple of weeks.

Its nonsense to use this as evidence as the govt messing up although I would rather front line NHS staff over 50 to be given the vaccine first.

This govt will f*ck it up though and in six months time, I'm prepared to bet that, we will have fewer people per capita vaccinated than similar countries.

All the commentators I’ve heard speak on the subject reckon that the U.K. has a good existing system for vaccinating large numbers of people.

Although the government is in overall charge isn’t the NHS tasked with the actual processes involved?

Although it can go wrong, why should it?

Yes - presumably the UK has used it because we are leaving the club whilst everybody else is hanging together?

To be honest I can't think of a way how it can go wrong but this govt's only talents are for cocking up and lying. If this was a film and you saw a scene with Gavin Williamson sounding off as he did you'd expecting some sort of comeuppance....

UKC is becoming more bonkers by the day.

I've not decided yet. 

You have confidence in the government to manage this after the last nine months?

How about if you're refused work for certain employers because you have no proof of vaccination?
How about if you're refused entry to certain countries because you have no proof of vaccination?

Because the "NHS" is a convenient term for any number of different organisations.

"NHS track and trace" for example is Serco and various consultancy firms well known previously for their expertise in the area.

The "NHS supply chain" had its own problems with rather curious companies.

So it depends if it is left to the professionals or whether the usual suspects manage to get their hands on it for a reasonable and altruistic fee of course.

Yes, because I believe that the management of the whole vaccination program will be set up by people that know what they're doing and will be allowed to do so by the current Government.
Boris and his mates will effectively have no say on how that is run. They'll obviously authorise such things as military involvement, etc. but that will be their input apart from taking the glory.
What do you think will happen?
 

There’s a well established, fully functioning network for distribution and delivery of vaccines in the U.K. Which the government could have altered in the past in order for they and their chums to make some money. But they haven’t.

So while the government might choose another system for the Covid vaccines it’s likely that they won’t. IMHO.

Bearing in mind the fundamental f*ck up which was track and trace. Why are you more optimistic than Johnson and pals will let the pros be in charge this time?

We have nothing on a similar scale though. Aside from flu either they are aimed at a certain age group in school or are adhoc (for travel and stuff). Flu is nowhere close to what is needed.

I would love for it to work well but going back to track and trace. The option was to build out the existing local authority structures (mainly aimed at std and on a lot smaller scale) or to bring in companies with zero previous expertise to try and manage it nationally. So I am somewhat dubious.

Bridges to be crossed if and when. 

I happen to know someone in the room this is being argued over. There's a bun fight and not all the ideas brought to the table seem equally well considered. Fingers crossed last I heard the adults were winning.

Jk

Just in case people missed it, nothing to do with the government.

There has been a 'quality control' issue in the production of the vaccine. 

(whatever that means)

In reply to ThomasWeek:

How's Russia Tomski ?

Your eagerness to encourage government coercion through denial of liberty is disturbing. Does having a permanent electronic medical passport assigned to every living being, determining all aspects on how you can live your life sound like something we really want without some serious thought and discussion on the implications and ethics? You seem happy to dive head first into dystopia. 

Are you keen on introducing a Chinese style social credit system as well? Why not? It'll reduce all sorts of social ills, and it only costs your privacy and free will.

We don't know that at all.

Right now we are still in a transitional agreement which means effectively in the EU.  Right now we are the only country where the vaccine is approved.

This time next month we are out of the EU, possibly without a deal, probably with huge logistical problems around ports and the channel tunnel and many other countries will have approved the vaccine.    It is far from clear that in a situation with limited supply and very large demand the UK will be at the front of the queue or that logistics difficulties due to Brexit won't affect a product which needs specialised vehicles to transport it.

You reckon the government has set up the infrastructure to provide formal proof of vaccination? I've not heard anything about that and my guess is that's because they haven't.

I have a possible solution. Just offer Servo, Capita, Group 4 and a few other 'NHS Contractors' £1 million per week for doing absolutely nothing and staying away, and let the regular NHS staff get on with it.

That should enable the Chumocracy get their cut without messing it up for the rest of us.

Like it or not, international travel is a privilege not a right.  The UN list of mandatory vaccines for travel to various destinations is something like 20 pages you.  

Your eagerness to cry “Liberty” in the face of a long standing norm for managing the intersection of disease and international travel is disturbing.

This whole thread is disingenuous from the outset ...

Age is the single largest determinant of severe Corona Virus symptoms and death.  [1]

• 18-29 - base line group
• 30-39 - 2x higher probability of hospitalization/4x higher probability of death if the contract Covid.
• 40-49 - 3x/10x higher
• 50-64 - 4x/30x higher
• 65-74 - 5x/90x higher 
• 75-84 - 8x/220x higher
• 85+ - 13x/630x higher

OMG ... the government are giving it to the old folks in care homes first.  Why?  Because when they get Corona Virus in care homes ... A) they are more likely than any other age group to need hospitalization and B) they are more like to die than any other age group.  Not the case for other age groups inc. not the case when NHS staff get it (because they're not typically 85+ years old!).

There is no news story here.  

[1]  https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/older-adul... 

Clearly you do not travel overseas much. Otherwise you would eaily understand that vaccines are quite normal and in  certain environments essential.I have a vaccine "passport"as part of my work.It is quite useful.

Maybe you want to travel around a bit more.

You might not have noticed 2020 but it would be at worst a dive into a different dystopia.

jk

Brexit? Or that they have a certain manufacturing capacity and that other countries are also just as entitled as our citizens to have access to the virus and thus a fair way to distribute the vaccine is to send it in batches between countries which have invested in it on rotation? If every life is worth an equal amount then why should the UK get it's full allocation in a single push while others are forced to wait?

It's very common for manufacturers to alternate production run allocations when dealing with multiple clients and high demand.

I broadly agree - but it's not quite the whole story, as (some of the) NHS staff are much more likely to spread it, and particularly to spread it to vulnerable people. (This also applies to care home staff.)

Those more likely to spread it should generally be higher up the list than would be suggested by their personal vulnerability alone.

But then, they mostly will be - so that's probably OK.

I'm not claiming it is a right, but I'm never happy about any removal of freedoms. I've travelled a lot of Europe/Turkey, United States and Aus/NZ and don't recall having to provide vaccination information. Perhaps this is different for South America/Asia/Africa? Providing information feels subtly different to me than being electronically tagged and blacklisted.

When people say they'd prefer or are happy to wait as long as possible before getting the vaccine why are they are met with threats of "we'll stop your work and travel", in other words your ability to survive. Does your international travel banning extend to intra-UK travel eg. England to Wales? Why not prevent cross-county travel?

It's the eagerness for this that I cannot stand. If we were nearing the end of the vaccine roll-out and still seeing notable amounts of cases I'd get it, but not yet. Anyone claiming we'll be wearing masks for another 2 years and foaming at the mouth in anticipation of total government oversight of all aspects of their life to me is sad and terrifying. 

Are you satisfied there are no ramifications to continuing down this path? I'd rather discuss the nuances and grey areas of this than argue absolutes. I don't expect you are against the concept of liberty, and I know I'm not against vaccination and public health concerns. 

I love it when people say this...

A vaccine goes through rigorous multi stage double blind testing using a increasingly large cohorts of test subjects, the results carefully studied and analysed against those from the control group by the best scientists in the country, gets approved and licensed....

But no, none of this is good enough.  It has to pass the final test.  The "I'm just going to wait a while and see what happens" test applied by laymen on the street who, for reasons unknown, seem to think that their sit and wait approach is a more robust test than anything it's been subjected to so far.

Yes it is ok, you have every right to take this approach, nobody is pushing anything on you.  But it does make me think you place an overly high value on you own judgement, seeing as you seem to value this more than that of the scientists who have trialled the vaccine already.   

Don’t you think that those responsible for the vaccine distribution have considered this when they came to their conclusions about who should get the vaccine first?

It’s amazing how everyone thinks they’re now a public health expert and that their views are as valid as the people who determine access to vaccines for a living.

I hope you offset that carbon footprint m'lord.

Hi there Matt.

Yes, I do.

Did you actually not read my post before replying to it?

You can read through this list to see where vaccines are recommended and where they are required for travel.  I've had to have vaccinations a couple of times.  Their country, their rules, my choice.

https://www.who.int/ith/2016-ith-county-list.pdf

Hard geographic borders could have been one of the most effective ways to get this situation under control and to return a lot more liberty to people than they now have.  Look at the Isle of Wight for example of what a little bit of soft isolation does to prevalence.  Liberty isn't a conserved quantity - a bit more given voluntarily at the start of the pandemic would have lead to less being taken away when things got to the red line, and would have seen more of it  returned by now.  That's my problem with the "liberty" arguments - they're a large part of what undermined the best possible responses earlier in the year, to the net detriment of.... liberty.

I understand why people are eager for as much of a return to normal as possible. I think it's likely that this is going to require a certain level of vaccination, and that there will have to be a ratcheting up of measures if we don't get to that point naturally.  Why should an airline fly an someone unvaccinated by choice, when it puts employees and staff at risk?  None of the vaccine candidates are 100% effective and some people will not be able to be vaccinated.  To my mind their right to work and to travel supersedes the right of someone choosing not to be vaccinated to put their lives at risk.

This is Earth, not Asimov's Solaria and we live, work and travel in close proximity to each other.  Our liberties are heavily curtailed in almost every way as part of social norms, conventions and ultimately law.  It doesn't take much looking around the world to convince me that this is better than any currently known alternatives.  The norms, conventions and laws change in response to changing times.  We are in changing times.  

Then again given today's news that business people are going to be given exemptions from quarantine when returning from international travel is a pause for thought....

You weren't far wrong. They were posting from Ukraine 😆

Do you really think that a product so essential would be delayed by processing at this side of the channel? Of course not, fast track prioritisation would be mean it was expedited quickly through the import process, even if it delays other items. It's clear that the government will want to make this a success and as we have seen they are willing to bend the rules in desperation, hence the PPE scandals.

So the other option for delay would be on the other side of the channel, which no sensible EU nation would do because contrary to Brexiteer propaganda they aren't tin pot dictators and realise that delaying export will be seen as tantamount to a declaration of war, quite often we talk about our actions killing granny these days. I don't think, logically, any EU country would wish to sabotage it's international image in the UK and cause long term public animosity like was expressed towards the Germans by many in the post-war period.

The final problem would be if the company exporting did not get their paperwork in order. I don't think a company like Pfiser would be having paperwork problems with the export either, responsible and organised companies sorted their EORI requirements and processes about a year ago, and it's not like Pfiser doesn't export internationally to states outside of trade agreements. Indeed you can probably be sure their products, including this sensitive vaccine, will make it into countries with trade embargoes and bueraucratic systems more farcical than ours.

But you will have had vaccines........if not then maybe do some research on some those countries you have listed and open your eyes a bit.Hepatitis A, hepatitis B, typhoid, rabies, and tetanus.As a good employer I insist on my engineers having these where recommended.If you are a serious traveller then you will know and understand this.

I will bet your bottom dollar that for NZ and Aus you will have to have a vaccine to visit in the future.

Some of these libertarian arguments are really a load of b####ks. They do not look at wider community issues.Liberty includes you not infecting/carrying a virus elesewhere.

In all fairness every time one of my suppliers releases a new machine despite extensive testing in the factory there are problems for the first few years once they are out in the wild. Same goes for cars etc, I have always avoided the new model motorcycle because the first year or so is invariably full of problems and warranty recalls. 

This happens because financial constraints mean they can only do a given amount of testing and also tests are done under specific conditions on a handful of machines, once there are hundreds or thousands of them out there in different conditions the cracks start to show. 

I'm sure the vaccine has had rigorous testing and I will get it as soon as I can but there is no denying it has been rushed through compared to normal times and even drugs that have been through the multiple year normal process have problems when released to the public, it would be foolish to assume this one will be any different. 

For me though the reward is far greater than the risk so I'm bang up for it. 

Or maybe via a VPN hosted in Ukraine? If I posted from my work computer you could find some seriously odd locations depending on which datacentre I'm taking my files from. Plenty of real people use VPNs 100% of the time to hide their location for internet security, personally I don't see the point because it's all traceable by security agencies anyhow, but some do.

That would be like Inception level of trolling if it turned out to be someone in UK posting via a VPN in Ukraine.

There were posts from another user profile using the same IP. Binned them both.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/feb/09/ministers-lose-fight-to-sto...

There were issues with the swine flu vaccine that got approved. Time and real world trials highlighted them.

I'm not likely to be offered the vaccine for a while. In the meantime I'll sit on the fence while the first doses are administered and see what happens for better (hopefully) or worse. 

I don't disagree skog.  I am p1ssed at some of the posting on UKC in last few days (not your response).  There is a lot of total sh1t being posted right now.  It's a gold mine for antivaxers of which I am gobsmacked at the number of them.

I get it .. the NHS have been hero's .. we should thank them by vaccinating them first.  It's a nice idea and its pretty galling to think that the NHS staff have, literally, put their lives on the line and won't in return be first in the queue.  

Reality is that it just wont be that fairy tale ending people want it to be.

In Scotland (where I am), the 75+ age group have accounted for 92% pf the covid deaths to date and 76% of hospitalizations.  [2]  There is an argument to be made that the NHS emergency will be over once the covid problem is solved in this age group alone.  

Almost certainly, and with a few exceptions - point taken, it will be largely age based.  Quite possible the the yoofs never get vaccinated.

Cheers

[1]  https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/older-adul...

[2] https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/  (Data sources = https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotl... & https://beta.isdscotland.org/find-publications-and-data/population-health/c...)

I think it's a lot more complex than that when you have motorways turned into parking lots.  The goods you want to let through might be blocked by goods your don't care about.  Maybe they'll stop sailing ferries if they can't unload them.   Maybe the entire road infrastructure in that region will lock up with tailbacks affecting junctions and causing secondary congestion.  There is potential for a clusterf*ck.

I also think the UK is not likely to stay at the top of the queue when the US or EU have the vaccine approved.   If there are logisitics problems delivering to the UK and you have a perishable product it becomes a no brainer where to send it first.

.There have been interesting tables about who has pre-ordered and paid for vaccine developments.I think from what I saw only the UK and the USA had preordered 3. Germany and France were on 2 and so on.

Preordering in reality means the vaccine companys have speed up production processes and we have in reality made this happen by paying upfront..I doubt logistics issues ( other than say a storm in the channel closing ferry ports are even a blip on the landscape- even then there are planes)

All these type of issues are addressed in the contract negotiations and were dealt with months ago.

And there is standardised pricing between EU, USA and UK, as we in those countries  are paying a bit more to help fund the  vaccines at cost for other countries.

And do not forget that China and Russia have their own...cough ,splutters.

I'll admit, this rankled a bit, and I should just leave it but I'm not going to - I specifically said I'm a total layman further above, and I wasn't criticising the current system or prioritisation at all.

So, while I don't really expect an answer - can you back this up with any examples on this thread - or do you just enjoy throwing shit around?

You dont necessarily need to use the same paths though. The RAF C-17s and maybe the A400s would probably be capable of ferrying it over.

Quite.  I've heard a rumour that the Navy might own a few boats of their own and may even have ways of loading and offloading heavy items from them, and that they can do with problems like lorries in the way or enemy tanks for that matter...   Given the level of anti-establishment claptrap that came out when the SBS went in after some hijackers the other week I imagine there'll be another pointless spiral of negativity on here if the girls and boys in green or blue bring it over.  It'll counteract the jingoistic crap the cabinet will come out with and we'll all carry on just as annoyed as before.  

Its worth noting those "conclusions" dont seem to be set in stone and it has changed several times in terms of priorities switching from front line staff to care home residents and back again.

20M vaccinated (40M double doses) if we put some aside for front line medical and care staff as a firebreak gets us down to about age 55+ which will very likely be good enough to get us out of this mess if it's handled impeccably.

IFR for 40-50 looks to be ~1:40,000 for no comorbidities, ~1:4,000 for >1 comorbitities (cardiovascular, kidney, liver and respiratory diseases, cancers various, diabetes plus other rarer conditions).

There's roughly 13M people aged 40-55. If 5% (a guess, these are quite common conditions) have comorbidities and we assume the 50-55 covid risk is the same as for 40-50 (because I'm lazy and it lowballs the answer) then if they're all exposed to a massive third wave: 325 die of covid with comorbidities and 292 of covid without comorbidities, 600 total though 2/3 exposure seems a more realistic upper bound for infection in one big wave so 400 and maybe another 200 aged 30-40, few below that.

If we get all 40M doses delivered quickly before we're forced let the brakes off then covid will probably at worst kill another 1000 or so unvaccinated people. The timing matters though and my assumptions are gross.

If we consider the ~5% of the vaccinated for whom the vaccine apparently isn't as effective, most of whom would still survive an infection. Without the vaccine we could very roughly expect IFR to be 5% in that group and maybe in a let er rip scenario half get exposed between shielding breaking down and burnout: 1/2 *5% * 5% * 20M = 25K which would would take a third wave pretty close to healthcare overload but that does assume the vaccine does nothing for the unlucky 5% and the numbers are very rough, particularly that 1/2 exposed estimate which could be improved but likely not degraded much.

It's going to be hard to rationally argue against letting it rip if we get the vaccine deployed quickly and the next drop is still a couple of months off at that point. Equally so but much more dangerous in the situation where the 40M doses are delivered in dribs and drabs.

Numbers guestimated/butchered from:

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2019/

https://gh.bmj.com/content/bmjgh/5/9/e003094.full.pdf 

That would be absolutely brilliant when applied across the private sector too.

"Hi, I'm the new head of Business Transformation and Change!"

"Pleased to meet you. Do you see that nice office with the lovely view and executive furnishings over there?"

"The one with no telephone or access to IT systems?"

"Thats the one. Just go sit in there and don't touch anything or talk to anyone, ever."

If you look at some Diabetes websites, numbers in that age group are above 5% just for that particular co-morbidity.

Thanks, please do chip in with corrections, I didn't have the motivation to dive into each of the comorbidities, it's all very back of the fag packet stuff.

I really only only needed an order of magnitude to see how hard the case would be to make for waiting for vaccine #2. Realistically I'm pretty sure we'd be easily convinced to kill 10K for a normal summer (which it wouldn't be obviously) let alone 1K.

Those 40M Pfizer doses all need to be delivered in a block to avoid carnage if there's a delay between batches, the politics of this will be a runaway train once the death rate starts dropping fast.

Obviously they could shift that amount of pallets of that's all they had to do.  The refrigeration thing would be a complication as would any regulatory requirements specific to vaccines.

But they don't have to solve just one problem.  There's going to be a ton of other stuff which is just as critical or even more critical than the vaccine which will get held up by no deal Brexit.  The capacity of the military is miniscule by comparison to commercial logistics.  They aren't going to replace it.

This is a plot from last year's ONS population survey.

If the distribution of the vaccine is 100% efficient and is done in ranked age decreasing order, it runs out most of the way through the 55-60 year old bin.

This is right around the tipping point where Covid fatality and hospitalisation rates start to become significant - and rising - with age. 

So any sort of predictions are going to be hyper-sensitive to the details which isn't a great place to be.  Vastly better than no vaccine, don't get me wrong.

Another 10m doses would bring the vaccinated regime down to 50 which would be a lot more comfortable, but really this one just has to get us through winter and spring, summer will take care of itself I think by that point and then there's hopefully the other vaccines the UK has purchased to bring in.

Yo!

Ahh ... I see what you're saying here.  Shielding + restrictions has (to date) saved us from healthcare overload but Vaccine down to 40+ age group + let it rip i.e. without any restrictions could still bring us close to health care overload.  Did I get that right?

Conclusion being that even with vaccination down to 40+ ... we may still need some restrictions on mobility and socialization to keep a lid on things?

Help me understand the bit about dribs and drabs.  How will that effect things?

Cheers

You do say it was fag packet stuff and I agree with some of your conclusions, but I think you are out by more than a factor of 10 in some of your assumptions based on your quoted sources.

IFR 40-49 >0 comorbidity 0.25ish for HIC so 1 in 400 not 4000 and in the 50-59 group it would be closer to 1 in 150

Yes I'm not claiming every drug or vaccine ever administered has been completely safe for all, thalidomide immediately comes to mind.

However adverse reactions and unexpected consequences normally only affect a very small proportion of the people administered (as in your example), so it generally takes years, if not decades to link the vaccine or drug to these consequences.

As your monitoring will probably consist of a) seeing if anything bad happens to your friends and family when they have it, or b) seeing if there's any press coverage about adverse affects it's very unlikely that this will aid you in making a more informed decision about he safety of the vaccine as the sample size in a) is far too small (smaller than the tests already run) and b) will be too far in the future. 

In the meantime whilst you wait, you are more likely to contract the virus and therefore more likely to infect vulnerable members of society, including those who have been vaccinated.

This approach also lengthens the time it will take until enough of the population have been vaccinated to allow life to return to normal.

So whilst you're free to make your own decisions, nobody is forcing you to take anything, what you're doing may be seen by some as being both pointless and socially irresponsible.

People will die unnecessarily because people have decided to wait before they accept the vaccine, or to not take it at all.   

You're absolutely right, fat fingers on the calculator, thanks.

That and Offwidth's point about the higher than 5% prevalence of just one comorbidity, diabetes in over 40s does bump the collateral damage from let er rip after a vaccine up from 1k to more like 10k unvaccinated working age dead in wave 3.

Plus maybe twice that again in the vaccinated group (harder to say). Not a pretty picture but I think unlikely as a hypothetical to sway government (though I do think they'd react to the misjudgement as they have with wave 1 and 2).

jk

I get why people are eager to get back to normal. However the route back to normal needs to be scrutinized and discussed. (I thought everyone gave up on the old normal? It's the NEW normal now remember). 

On the list of countries vaccination requirements/recommendations you kindly provided, it seems that the main two culprits are yellow fever and malaria. Most countries don't even have a recommendation for those two, let alone a requirement.  This current setup seems to me quite different in scale to a mandatory global vaccine requirement for all countries. Why aren't other historical diseases on this list?

What is controversial about someone in a not at risk category wanting as much time as possible to see how the situation pans out before committing to a course of action (or before actively and aggressively promoting said action to others)? Like it or not the top 10 at risk groups are, in a way, acting as guinea pigs regardless. Why not allow the initial waves of vaccination of the at risk determine the next stage of developments?

8k dead in an average flu year and 20 k in a bad one.

No chance IMO the government is going to impose restrictions to save 10-15k lives... 

I'm pessimistic so think it will be more like 30-40k but we have already demonstrated the health service can cope with this number of excess deaths in a few months. One thing that might change their minds is normally people who are currently working don't usually die of flu. Also there will be an economic impact of long covid in this age group.

Because they're not in a pandemic phase.  That is there's a lot of immunity out there to them and they're generally well contained.

In general that's what's going to happen isn't it.  But I'm all for caution in the mean time. 

What sort of adverse long term effects are you worried about, by the way?

Why does your right to travel on an aircraft without taking the vaccination trump the right of others who are susceptible for some other reason to travel safely?  What are the legal grounds for you demanding a company expose its workers to additional risk in order to provide you with a non essential service?  It's going to be an interesting year ahead.

You were referencing just vaccines though for which there is an obvious alternate path available.

I've yet to be offered the vaccine so calling me irresponsible for waiting is a bit premature. Blind faith in the science of a new vaccine or religion or whatever may work for you, but I prefer to be objective and question things. 

No its simply some countries will choose to protect themselves by restricting at risk people access.

Just look at the current rules in place in Australia and NZ which have been pretty effective at reducing the infections there. Requiring proof of vaccination would be a lot cheaper and impose a lot less on the people travelling.

If you look at the UK for the first wave there was a lot of infections linked to some ski resorts and then for the second wave a lot seem to have come from a new strain originating in Spain over the summer. So if we had required vaccination/quarantine for the second round it could have reduced the need for the lockdowns.

Go for it but just expect to have your holiday options reduced and remember if lots of people take the same approach then infections will remain high and we will all be negatively impacted by lockdowns and so on.

Awful shame you're not around to hear this, but you make a good point.

Awareness of side effects is a laudable aim, lest we take the acute reactions likely to occur in some cases as evidence for long-term risk.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6520/1022

Nobody has been vaccinated yet, or offered it, so of course this is premature. 

However from your previous posts it suggests your preference would be to hold off until a large cohort of people have been vaccinated first, as you feel that's safer for you.

What I'm suggesting is that you "objective and questioning" approach isn't actually achieving anything at all, and only serves to put other people at risk.

I'm not much of a one for blind faith myself (not religious whatsoever, seeing as you brought that in for some reason?).  I ask questions, I make up my own mind about things. 

But I also have a good enough understanding of science and experimental design to understand any questions or studies I can personally carry out on a new vaccine aren't going to gain me any insight to its safety.

Vaccine down to age 55 ish (20M people) followed by an unmitigated rapid exponential growth phase in the rest looks like it could be a close run thing on hospital capacity.

Down to mid 50s anyway it's not a pretty picture. It seems I got my numbers wrong, it's worse than I estimated but I suspect still not bad enough as a hypothetical to prevent the government lifting restrictions.

Vaccinated down to 45-50 (plus more vulnerable groups below that) it looks like we'd expect very very few deaths in the unvaccinated group.

So we have 40M Pfizer shots ordered, let's say 10M turn up promptly and are carefully deployed in areas with the worst problems among the vulnerable. In conjunction with the current nationwide lockdown extension death rates plummet and this hopefully but incorrectly attributed by the press, public, lobbyists and evidence-dodging MPs to the vaccine which has 'been deployed' and 'worked', job done.

Pressure mounts to release social restrictions until the government can't resist the backbench and press rebellion. This will be against a backdrop of self inflicted brexit pain* and the government will be looking for a wildly popular distraction, hat'll likely help tempt them to roll the dice. The remaining delayed 30M doses are now racing soaring infections. We don't have control of all possible delays and the genie won't be easily put back in the bottle with a 3rd lock-down late spring. Unfortunately soaring deaths 'after the vaccine was delivered' (incompletely) is likely to be easily twisted to erode trust in the ongoing vaccine delivery program.

*any possible gains are very long term, the disruption and pain starts for real Jan 2nd.

It doesn't have to go that badly but to avoid it in the event of vaccine delays the government really should now be engaging in a massive expectation management and education drive for both MPs and public.

jk

The same military get-out-of-jail-free card has also been suggested for insulin and critical parts for water processing works and for just about anything else which is critical and might get held up by Brexit congestion. 

They aren't going to be able to do everything.

I agree but they will to prevent hospital overload if those 10-15k+++ all get sick too fast. Also that's only the unvaccinated. At 95% efficacy a lot of vaccinated people still get dangerously sick in a big third wave.

The narrative to wave 3 will be different, these aren't now predominantly people who are 'nearly dead' or 'older than average life expectancy' or any of the other weasel justifications we've seen for ignoring excess deaths. They'll predominantly be poorer working people, many with caring responsibilities. The risk of the press turning that on a callous unpopular (remember the brexit interaction) government for easy heart-string tugging sales and clicks (and leverage!) shouldn't be discounted.

jk

And I never said they would. I was responding to your specific claim about vaccines.  Highly perishable and limited in quantity supplies is something they would be suited to though.

Nice chap from NCSC on the Today programme this morning, asking people to submit phishing emails to them, so they can take action.

I wonder if there's a reporting system for overseas influencers 

Or maybe this government doesn't want to know about that...

Yes they could do vaccines.  But every time somebody says X will be a problem after Brexit the Brexiteers/Government say 'the military will fix it'.  And maybe if X was the only problem they could.  But not all the X's at the same time. 

I remember a picture from during the first wave.  UK government sent a military plane to collect PPE from Turkey.  Somebody took a picture of the A400M on the tarmac and it was parked next to a 747 freighter.  The tokenism of sending the military plane was blindingly obvious when you saw the scale of it.

Probably not, lifting controls to allow whatever we choose into the country is likely to be one of things that we can easily achieve.

I did a super-crude model.

Figure 1 - the ONS population from 2019.  Vaccinate 20 m people in age decreasing rank with the 40 m Pfizer doses.

Figure 2 - an exponential model of IFR based on [1].  I've limited the IFR to 20% for no particular reason other than a suspicion that the exponential model probably breaks down past their data points so I'll make an optimistic assumption.  I just pulled the datapoint out of the abstract...

Figure 3 - Multiply the population by the IFR for two scenarios - (1) no vaccine, (2) vaccine as per figure 1 with 95% reduction in mortality.  

This gives 980k deaths for no vaccine and 82k deaths for the vaccination program.  The population level IFR of this is about 2x what we're actually seeing in the UK, so maybe those would be 490k and 41k deaths respectively.  Now, perhaps 10% of those deaths have happened already, meaning that 440k and 37k deaths remain, respectively.  As we head towards herd immunity with the vaccine they might decrease to 70% of these values so 308k and 26k deaths respectively.    26k deaths is probably > 100k hospitalisations which might take 4 months to process through the NHS.

This is a super-crude model, but it doesn't come out in support of restrictions being fully released until more than 3 months after the Pfizer vaccination program is complete as otherwise we'll be right back to overwhelming the NHS.  Take out the various optimistic assumptions I made and it's more like 6 months - but the summer will naturally postpone the next wave meaning that restrictions would need to come in from October 2021 for some months.  

Probably an academic argument as the efficacy of the Oxford/AstroZeneca vaccine appears good enough to fix this if it can be given to the under 55s during the spring and summer of 2021.

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v7

If the 1.4m  NHS staff and 1.6m social care staff  and 500,000 teachers were vaccinated that would push the age up quite a bit?

Yup, probably another 15k to 25k potential deaths.  Then there’s an open question about the level of wastage that’s going to be incurred by the distribution pipeline; could be another 10k potential deaths (5% wastage) depending on how smart the system is and if the vaccine can go back into the freezer after time in a fridge if it doesn’t get used in its narrow fridge window.

If you are trying to predict when/whether hospital overload would occur, don't you need to take more account of the rate of infections and doubling times? The numbers could be spread over a far longer time period than the first wave - even with measures relaxed there will still be more working from home, still be many people starting out being cautious, less transmission in homes because of older groups being vaccinated and NHS staff will vaccinated so reducing transmission in healthcare. I have no idea the magnitude of effect but I think it would be significant in spreading out the time it takes for the disease to get round 40m unvaccinated people and therefore infect the 26000 that wintertree says will die. Possibly even years rather than months? If so, this would obviously remove any risk of healthcare overload.

I’m stopping way short of predicting and taking a very crude estimate - and that comes back saying “problem not intrinsically solved”.

It’s a good point though. If the vaccine was randomly distributed throughout the population I’d agree somewhat; but with a value of R likely over 3 in a “no restrictions” scenario, vaccinating about 30% of people won’t have much of a moderating effect.  R would drop to about 2.1 which is still fast exponential growth to healthcare overload within the timescale of a few months.   We probably need > 50% vaccinated for the moderating effect to really draw out the doubling times in the absence of control measures.  However, that lowering of R can be balanced by halving control measures which is a big boon to the economy and people’s lives I’d imagine.

But with an age based segmentation I think the moderating effect is much less in younger people and more in older people because society stratifies its interactions naturally on age lines.  So in terms of human interaction most younger people mostly meet younger people and the vaccine will have little effect on transmission.  As older people no longer become ill, a key “canary” for infections is also removed (this is good, don’t get me wrong) so I think the spread will be more asymptomatic than it is now which frustrates test/trace as a control measure.

I take your point about reduced transmission in healthcare and care homes - it may be that the half of the deaths in older people in my noddy model are largely absent as there may be good herd immunity in their age stratified layers of society.

Yes - my noddy model was for if we dropped all control measures.  I don’t think that’s going to happen.   I think the relaxation of measures has to be progressive and gradual enough that there’s time to step back if something proves to go much worse than expected.

I think it comes down to jkarran’s observation that the messaging over this first vaccine has to be very realistic and clear.

I'm with what you're doing in principle here, but have to question this bit. How does what happens in the future affect how many deaths have happened so far? Have 4k people died or 40k? Not sure holding onto that as a %age follows. Surely it's a constant. Don't think it affects your point though.

This. Totally this. Not sure why it's not clearer that the way this is going to go is that vaccination will slowly take over from restrictions as a means of, crudely, keeping R < 1. You don't have to vaccinate everyone to have a decaying epidemic with controlled reopening. IMO people aren't realising/being told this as much as they should.
As discussed ad nauseam the let-er-rip scenario just leads to that 0.5-1% of low-risk people becoming a really big number, so that's not a goer.

Edit: jk already said basically this up thread. sorry for repeating.

Put it another way; perhaps 10% of people in the UK have had covid and now either have some level or naturally acquired immunity or have died from it, and so either way around they’re - with my optimistic hat on - not going to contribute to future deaths if we dropped all control measures after the Pfizer vaccination round finishes.  So I drop 10% of people out of my model.  It’s not actually the past deaths so much as the past exposure that matters to this take, which I’m assuming has no age bias.

This is what I meant - written differently (and less clearly!) - and I think you’re interpreting it differently to how I meant it, but I’m not quite sure how.

I try and do the daft model with an optimistic hat; if comes back saying “caution” so that bounds the more pessimistic takes.

The main point making me nervous is that the edge of the vaccinations (in age) lands right where the IFR starts becoming significant so any modelling results will be very sensitive to the assumptions in the models.  My noddy one is riddled with assumptions.  

Ok, I think it makes sense now I've re-read a couple times.
Biggest missing assumption imho is long-term health impact. A generation of people who can't walk up stairs without wheezing is gonna be more expensive than staying shut for a few more months. Big bet to take.

Yes; putting an optimistic hat on for the model I ignore the long term health damage to some subset of people. 

Yup.

I think rationally we have to wait a few months to really understand how it’s going to go next year.  Depending on if/when the AZ vaccine is deployed this could all look a lot better.  There are more vaccines in the pipeline too.  I’m very positive about the next 3-, 6- and 12-months but I don’t think that justifies placing any big bets.  I’m preparing to be disappointed as I think the toxic state of politics in the UK and USA is going to force a lot of hands.

I suspect that same observation applies to East London right now as well.  Given how it was going in lockdown (R about or more than 1 in different boroughs), T2 isn’t going to do them any favours and there’s enough population there to eventually use up most of 
London’s hospitals given time.  I can’t see it staying T2 after the first review.

Yeah I think we can basically forget about the Pfizer vaccine. We won't see any more than this first lorryload. Once everyone approves it that'll be off the table. 

The AZD1222 one is the one that'll fix it. There's shitloads of it ready to go and it can get to everyone. Looking forward to its approval. 

Maybe not completely forget about it, but there's a report in the FT now suggesting that the UK is likely to get "low millions" of doses of the Pfizer this year, rather than the 10m originally anticipated.  The hold-up, it is claimed, is a shortage of supplies of the phospholipids needed to make the nanoparticles.  I believe they were being sourced from Croda, so we can blame Yorkshire. 

Only problem is that the data that came they have released raises several questions, and efficacy seems fairly low. Several Wall Street analysts predict it may not even be authorised by the FDA.

Very good article on wired : https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-data-isnt-up-to-s...

The explanation given for the initial strange data release were straightforward and the problem seemed more about how it was reported than anything else. Most of the negative articles in the following days were from the US, which frankly made me suspicious that it was just about trying to make their own companies and products look better. The vaccine might not be quite as effective as the first two but none of what was said in the data release implied that it was either ineffective or unsafe.

Edit, just read the wired article above, there is a bit more in that than I have seen before, but it still sounds more like something that just needs the data sorting out clearly from the different bits of the trial than anything else. Might cause some delay for the regulator - but apparently they were bought in to what was being done from an early stage, so must have been preparing for it.

I’ve been wondering how much of the US media coverage is “NIH Syndrome”.  If accurate, the efficacy of the AZ/Oxford vaccine is sufficient to make a hell of a difference to the UK and it’s very unlikely to be supply limited.  

Given how well the mRNA vaccines are working and that the Oxford one uses a proven platform to introduce the upstream RNA of the same antigen, I’d be very surprised if it had any fundamental problems.  There’s a lot of shade being thrown at the two different efficacy numbers but as I understand it they’re not separated by that much statistical significance.  60% efficacy rolled out population wide is transformative.

I read the article, I'm no expert but there didn't seem a lot in it? Faucci was quoted and IMO he usually makes a lot of sense, but he has backtracked/clarified his remarks on out approving the biontech approval in the UK.  I'm not convinced his comments in the article have been taken out of context? For example

“There are lots of issues,” Paul Hunter, professor in medicine and expert on clinical trial methodology at the University of East Anglia, UK, told New Scientist.

 but he goes onto say

"So should we disregard this vaccine trial?

Absolutely not,” says Hunter. Even if the vaccine is really only 62 per cent effective, that is higher than the 50 per cent threshold deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization and the US Food and Drug Administration. If this result had come out three weeks earlier we would have been over the moon, says Hunter. It is just that we have been spoiled by good news from elsewhere, with several other vaccine trials

anyway I'm under 55, in good health and not Brazilian so it sounds like excellent news to me 
 

That article does read like a hatchet job to me.  There clearly are some oddities with the data, particularly around dosing,  but jumping from that to "it's all a disaster" and claiming every facet of the trial was flawed is clearly not balanced.  I think you are right regarding the US - they do have a strong "not invented here" thing going on in general which I am sure will apply to vaccines too.

Efficacy is not low by any measure. Kicks the shit out of the seasonal flu vaccine. And as said it doesn't need to be that good to solve the problem.

It's unfortunate that they released sketchy data but the people whose job it is to scrutinise it are scrutinising it. 

You're looking for turds in a pot of gold here. 

The New York Times wrote an article with exactly the same analysis.

Just because a perspective comes from abroad doesn’t make it less relevant.

It's typical rom criticising anything UK Government related.

But there could be an angle to promote their more expensive vaccine?

I'm still not ready to be satisfied that it's a subset. There's just no information, obviously, on what happens next. Could make your dick fly off 10 years later for all we know. Might not. Might. Dunno. 

No, I’m looking for weaknesses in their data and the claims  they have made, which is what one should do.

Both from the USA, whose toys are nationally out of the pram because they weren't first

Funny isn’t it, I’ve not criticised the UK government one bit, yet the OP has MG and others dishing out shit on it by the truckload and you don’t have a problem with it.

In fact you rarely have any problem with anybody criticising the UK government, - despite it being the UKC official past time - unless it comes from me.
 

You're criticising the Oxford vaccine which is pretty much a UK Gov project.
As for not criticising MG, etc. I suggest you read the thread...

Reply Part 2: I question loads of people on UKC regarding their criticisms of UK Gov. Again, I suggest you actually do some reading, as opposed to lazily attempting to accuse me of targeting you and you alone.

Not "just because", correct.  But if it is part of pattern then it may do.

As a flavour, car small ads in the US are divided between "Domestic" and "Foreign"

Hmmm ... I hadn’t thought about all that.

As others have said - next year is going to be interesting.

I couldn’t give a f*ck where the vaccine comes from or which nation is behind it.

This may be important to you - it isn’t to me.

I’m just looking at the facts and the fact is that there has been complications with the trials and with the data release, as per the NYT and wired articles, so there are still question marks around this vaccine and probably longer delays to be expected.

Frankly this seems like patriotic bullshit to me. Other non-US and UK based media have reported exactly the sale analysts I have made.  In fact Astra share price went down on the news, so the problems have been recognised by analysts.

I find it really weird how overly patriotic people get about vaccines.

Err, right.

Well yes, right, to brush away what is essentially a fact-based analysis on the basis  that is from an American point of view is just bullshit.

Maybe I should quote exclusively British media... 

Interesting BBC podcast raising similar points. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172x58s09gwzkx

Yes, I said you were right. As you always are.  About everything. 

Not really, it’s more a case of you being often wrong and not taking any fact that disproves your view very well. 

Same points raised in the very British FT: https://www.ft.com/content/cc78aa2f-1b10-446a-88d9-86a78c5ce461

Hopefully that addresses the weird concerns that the article I posted had an American imperialist bias of some sort...

No need.  You are right, I know

Donato Paolo Mancini wrote both the FT article and the podcast?

Donato covers the coronavirus pandemic, with a focus on drug companies and public health. Previously, he worked for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.

Sarcasm and posturing may requires less effort than analysing and challenging facts, but it’s also of very little interest. So good bye.

Omg, he has a foreign name and  worked for an American newspaper. The horror ! 
 

Seriously I’m all for discussing and challenging the article I posted but let’s stick to the facts rather than the background or origin of the author, this isn’t what’s important.

You cited two sources giving the impression the were different? 

The data from phase 1 and 2 shows the vaccine is safe. Yes there is some debate about the results of the phase 3 trial. The talk of 90% is optimistic and possibly a bit partisan in the way it has been reported in the UK . There is a lack of evidence about how effective it is in older people. But for younger people in Britain and the majority of the developing world it seems like very good news so far.

Nowhere have I said it isn’t good news, I have simply pointed out caveats, the same ones you in fact just made and that have been made in the press, international and British.

What I observe is that the reactions I got from the articles were mostly along political lines rather than on facts...

Sorry, for the late reply (it was past my bedtime). It seems that we are broadly in agreement. You did start by saying

Only problem is that the data that came they have released raises several questions, and efficacy seems fairly low. Several Wall Street analysts predict it may not even be authorised by the FDA.

Yes there are procedural questions and questions about the efficacy, but not about safety. I suppose it is a subjective opinion as to whether it is "fairly low" but 62% looks to be lower bound and is well above the 51% threshold. I read the wired article and listen to the podcast (he sounded a bit partisan to me, but I accept that I might have been looking out for that, although he did mention a pooled plan that has been retracted from the wired article, I'm still not sure what relevance his (Italian?) name has?) I understand his point that approval might take a bit longer but he never suggested it wouldn't get approval?

Never said otherwise. But if you’re going to mass innoculate the population with it efficacy is important. My only point really it that it would seems risky to bank everything on one vaccine that may turn out to be a dud (hopefully not !)

The uk government hasn’t banked everything on one vaccine, though. It’s actually preordered 6 different types (BioNTech/Pfizer, Oxford/AZ, Novavax, J&J, GSK/Sanofi and Valneva). It’s true that it couldn’t have known in advance which if any would work, or how well, so it was sensible to spread the risk.

Indeed - I dont think people realise just how small and overstretched the UK armed forces are.

Not to mention ‘military precision’ - an often used term that’s all too often not practised in reality.

I know, but someone was suggesting that the azn vaccine was going to be the one that fixes it - hence my reply with the caveats.

This vaccine jingoism is getting so bad it is like the Tories are trying to take the p*ss out of themselves (need to click on the picture to see the full thing):

https://twitter.com/ScotTories/status/1335537154051674112/photo/1

This seems more promising (and the share price has gone up)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-08/astra-vaccine-is-effecti...

"The lack of clarity over the true efficacy of the Astra-Oxford jab and plans for the additional study aren’t expected to hold up regulatory approvals in the U.K. and European Union"

Some thought need to be put into who gets which vaccine when?