Coronavirus

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Scott_M said:

I've not been fully following the EU debate, but claiming the Oxford jab is unsafe but then arguing they don't have enough of it, doesn't seem to make sense.

The full argument they have is the EU and India are producing the Oxford jab and sending it to other countries (allegedly also to the UK), while the UK are also producing it and not sending it anywhere. As a result the UK is speeding along while the EU is falling flat. 

 

I'm not sure how banning the use of it and stopping it's use on the elderly and vulnerable helps solve these problems, especially as stopping it's delivery on over 65s was taken quite early on. Looks to me like they had a plan not to include the Oxford jab and realised further down the line this was a fuck up. 

[Scott_M]

33 minutes ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

The full argument they have is the EU and India are producing the Oxford jab and sending it to other countries (allegedly also to the UK), while the UK are also producing it and not sending it anywhere. As a result the UK is speeding along while the EU is falling flat. 

 

I'm not sure how banning the use of it and stopping it's use on the elderly and vulnerable helps solve these problems, especially as stopping it's delivery on over 65s was taken quite early on. Looks to me like they had a plan not to include the Oxford jab and realised further down the line this was a fuck up. 

 

Is it correct then, as somebody else said, the UK did a separate deal with Astra Zenica while the EU dithered about and then did one as a block to stop the richer nations hoovering up all the supply?

 

I get the EU's point (and India's), but I'd also take our point of "We have a contract, snooze you lose". Not saying view either is right or wrong.

 

Unfortunately this was always likely to happen. Like when the US bought up the world's supply of some drug (I forget its name) last year.

 

Still, the EU complaining they don't have enough of something that they aren't fully using is somewhat strange.

 

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, Scott_M said:

 

Is it correct then, as somebody else said, the UK did a separate deal with Astra Zenica while the EU dithered about and then did one as a block to stop the richer nations hoovering up all the supply?

 

I get the EU's point (and India's), but I'd also take our point of "We have a contract, snooze you lose". Not saying view either is right or wrong.

 

Unfortunately this was always likely to happen. Like when the US bought up the world's supply of some drug (I forget its name) last year.

 

From memory, I seem to recall the UK had a deal for 10 million doses of the AZ jab as it was likely to be the most convenient one from the UK's perspective. I'm pretty sure this was the biggest individual deal the UK agreed initially, with the others being a couple of million each. As it was devleloped in the UK, this would have cut out some much red tape in terms of trials. As a result it was one of - if not the - earliest to market so it was a calculated risk by the UK.

 

Looks to me like the EU are trying to play poker, with each hand they are putting in a few chips knowing they have a losing hand. The blocking of production to the UK looks to me like the 'all in' move as there is nowhere they can go from there. This is most likely where the anticipated delay in India's production is coming from so perhaps it has worked but only time will tell.

[Bjornebye]

It’s nice to see the world and humanity working together as one to fight the virus and not trying to out- do or out-profit each other or anything like that 

[Barrington Womble]

2 hours ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

Sense this doesn't make - 'People staying away in enough number'

Hahaha. I was thinking exactly that when I was reading. What the fuck is she (he) going on about? 

27 minutes ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

From memory, I seem to recall the UK had a deal for 10 million doses of the AZ jab as it was likely to be the most convenient one from the UK's perspective. I'm pretty sure this was the biggest individual deal the UK agreed initially, with the others being a couple of million each. As it was devleloped in the UK, this would have cut out some much red tape in terms of trials. As a result it was one of - if not the - earliest to market so it was a calculated risk by the UK.

 

Looks to me like the EU are trying to play poker, with each hand they are putting in a few chips knowing they have a losing hand. The blocking of production to the UK looks to me like the 'all in' move as there is nowhere they can go from there. This is most likely where the anticipated delay in India's production is coming from so perhaps it has worked but only time will tell.

The UK ordered 100m doses of AZ, I believe 80% of which will be manufactured here. This is what we bought or agreed to buy ..

 

AZ 100m

Pfizer 40m

Moderna 17m

Novavax 60m

J&J 30m (only 1 dose per person required)

Valneva 60m

GSK 60m

[Scott_M]

25 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

It’s nice to see the world and humanity working together as one to fight the virus and not trying to out- do or out-profit each other or anything like that 

 

Genuine question, not just for you but the wider forum - Should the UK...

 

A) Help other countries and the EU etc with our stock of Vaccines and slow down our own progress.

 

B) Use all our own Vaccines to immunise the UK first, ramp up our own progress and then help others afterwards.

 

There is obviously no right or wrong answer here, but I'd be interested to see others take. 

[TheHowieLama]

11 minutes ago, Scott_M said:

 

Genuine question, not just for you but the wider forum - Should the UK...

 

A) Help other countries and the EU etc with our stock of Vaccines and slow down our own progress.

 

B) Use all our own Vaccines to immunise the UK first, ramp up our own progress and then help others afterwards.

 

There is obviously no right or wrong answer here, but I'd be interested to see others take. 

It seems like gubmints in this instance are customers - the drug companies used huge initial orders to subsidize the development costs - many not taking any "granted" money upfront so they could control the sales. Wasn't it the drug co's who were saying they would supply whatever was needed globally, for free, so there would be no hoarding?

[Bobby Hundreds]

Foreign holidays unlikely this summer! Motherfucker!

[scudger99]

I had my first innoculation yesterday morning, part 1 of 2.

Illness and injury don't usually slow me down too much, but today I am fucked.

3pm and I'm still lying on my bed in my dressing gown, getting hot flushes.

I woke up with an absolute cunt of a headache and am just plain knackered.

I rolled over on the injection site in my arm during the night and by fuck it was painful.

I used to take a lot of punishment on my arms and didn't let it affect me, but I can barely raise my arm this afternoon.

Hopefully it doesn't last long, but I'm not looking forward to a repeat performance of this shit.

[Sugar Ape]

This is a good summation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sugar Ape]

14 minutes ago, scudger99 said:

I had my first innoculation yesterday morning, part 1 of 2.

Illness and injury don't usually slow me down too much, but today I am fucked.

3pm and I'm still lying on my bed in my dressing gown, getting hot flushes.

I woke up with an absolute cunt of a headache and am just plain knackered.

I rolled over on the injection site in my arm during the night and by fuck it was painful.

I used to take a lot of punishment on my arms and didn't let it affect me, but I can barely raise my arm this afternoon.

Hopefully it doesn't last long, but I'm not looking forward to a repeat performance of this shit.

I was absolutely fucked after my first one (AstraZeneca), banging headache for days, felt sick and lethargic for about a week and my arm looked like Hellboy it was so red and swollen for about ten days afterwards. Not much you can do except take painkillers and keep hydrated and take some antihistamines if your arm is swollen. 
 

Had my second dose on Thursday and was dreading it but have had hardly any side effects at all. Slight pain in my arm for a day and that’s about it so I wouldn’t worry about the second jab. 

[Elite]

17 minutes ago, scudger99 said:

I had my first innoculation yesterday morning, part 1 of 2.

Illness and injury don't usually slow me down too much, but today I am fucked.

3pm and I'm still lying on my bed in my dressing gown, getting hot flushes.

I woke up with an absolute cunt of a headache and am just plain knackered.

I rolled over on the injection site in my arm during the night and by fuck it was painful.

I used to take a lot of punishment on my arms and didn't let it affect me, but I can barely raise my arm this afternoon.

Hopefully it doesn't last long, but I'm not looking forward to a repeat performance of this shit.

Boxer? 

[TheHowieLama]

1 minute ago, Elite said:

Boxer? 

I can't even catch her!

[SasaS]

1 hour ago, Scott_M said:

 

Genuine question, not just for you but the wider forum - Should the UK...

 

A) Help other countries and the EU etc with our stock of Vaccines and slow down our own progress.

 

B) Use all our own Vaccines to immunise the UK first, ramp up our own progress and then help others afterwards.

 

There is obviously no right or wrong answer here, but I'd be interested to see others take. 

 

I think only about 40% of vaccines so far administered in the UK were made in the UK. The rest was made in the EU and India. First Astra Zeneca doses administered in the UK were made in Germany and Netherlands. As for Pfizer, UK has so far produced only components. 

What needs to be done is abandon protectionary measures, primarily in the US, and those in the UK that are the result of UK's supply agreement with AZ, because that will only strongly push other countries where the vaccines are produced to do the same, as is now happening with India. If EU member state go the same way with export controls, UK wouldn't have much choice in "helping" other countries.

 

Interestingly, the strongest backlash against AZ vaccine is now coming from Nordic countries, which are least reliant on it and affected by the shortfall in deliveries to the EU and furthest ahead in vaccination. This leads me to believe that the main motivation is to force export controls in the EU, primarily on BioNTech's vaccine (Phizer), because that is what they want, not AZ. Because if the EU goes the way of US and UK, i.e. what is made here stays here, they would have enough BioNtech for the EU, with the poorer members getting mostly AZ, which is clearly seen as inferior by the richest countries.

 

[TheHowieLama]

@Sugar Ape

Where are you on this? Seems you have the jabs needed by way of "nationalism".

[SasaS]

9 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

@Sugar Ape

Where are you on this? Seems you have the jabs needed by way of "nationalism".

 

Did you have yours?

[Scott_M]

1 hour ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Foreign holidays unlikely this summer! Motherfucker!

 

Not sure about that. Holidays are due to be allowed again from 24th May. I think it'll depend on where you're going.

 

I due to go to Dubai in July / August. I see the vaccination rates there are pretty good, although I am concerned the UAE is currently on the "red list".

[TheHowieLama]

Just now, SasaS said:

 

Did you have yours?

Can't yet pal - so far only over 60 here or with pre existing conditions - supposedly next week will be moved down to over 50. We shall see.

[SasaS]

1 minute ago, Scott_M said:

 

Not sure about that. Holidays are due to be allowed again from 24th May. I think it'll depend on where you're going.

 

I due to go to Dubai in July / August. I see the vaccination rates there are pretty good, although I am concerned the UAE is currently on the "red list".

They are now saying you are very unlikely to be allowed to go because you may bring back a foreign variant.

You should have your holidays in the UK.

[Sugar Ape]

8 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

@Sugar Ape

Where are you on this? Seems you have the jabs needed by way of "nationalism".

I’m not sure, man. Ethically it is extremely dubious to expect other countries to export vaccines to you while you won’t export any yourself, however, even though this is a global problem, you could argue the first priority of any nation is to protect their own citizens first before thinking about the rest of the world and that is what the UK and US have done. 
 

It also seems from various reports I’ve read that individual EU countries were negotiating to buy their own vaccines, possibly with a view to having clauses where they get the jabs first, before the EU intervened and insisted they do the negotiating for all countries and at best they’ve been naive in not making sure they get first dibs on vaccines made in their territory. 

[Sugar Ape]

This is from The Guardian today:

 

International travel this summer is “extremely unlikely” for the average British holidaymaker, Dr Mike Tildesley, a scientist advising the UK government, warned on Saturday.

 

Tildesley said there was a danger travellers could bring back new variants of the virus which could be less susceptible to vaccines. 

 

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

 

I think we are running a real risk if we do start to have lots of people going overseas in July and August because of the potential for bringing more of these new variants back into the country. 

 

What is really dangerous is if we jeopardise our vaccination campaign by having these variants where the vaccines don’t work as effectively spreading more rapidly.

 

The British professor Andrew Hayward echoed Tildesley’s remarks, saying it is “unlikely” that the UK government will want to encourage Britons to travel to European countries currently experiencing high levels of coronavirus infections this year, 

 

Appearing on Times Radio he was asked if the possibility of permission to travel to Europe without restrictions could come under plans for the easing of lockdown. 

Hayward, a professor at University College London, said: 

 

I think the government has always been clear that travel abroad ... any changes or plans are likely to change on that. 

 

[...] It looks like some European countries are going to be having high levels and I think it’s unlikely that we would want to encourage travel to those countries whilst they have high levels of infection. 

 

[It’s about] keeping an eye on what variant is predominant within each country or even common. 

 

I suppose one of the more worrying things about this resurgence is that in some parts of Europe the South African variant is beginning to creep up to higher levels. 
 

So we’d obviously want to be very careful about that.

 

Hayward added the South African variant was of “particular concern” because vaccine effectiveness against it is “quite low”. 

[TheHowieLama]

13 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

I’m not sure, man. Ethically it is extremely dubious to expect other countries to export vaccines to you while you won’t export any yourself, however, even though this is a global problem, you could argue the first priority of any nation is to protect their own citizens first before thinking about the rest of the world and that is what the UK and US have done. 
 

It also seems from various reports I’ve read that individual EU countries were negotiating to buy their own vaccines, possibly with a view to having clauses where they get the jabs first, before the EU intervened and insisted they do the negotiating for all countries and at best they’ve been naive in not making sure they get first dibs on vaccines made in their territory. 

Yea - tough to move beyond the bolded here.

 

Are any countries really exporting anything? As in, bore the cost of development and then shipping to a country who didn't. The EU representing a bunch of countries doesn't change that. They are buying from manufacturers.

[Scott_M]

18 minutes ago, SasaS said:

They are now saying you are very unlikely to be allowed to go because you may bring back a foreign variant.

You should have your holidays in the UK.

 

Yeah, I saw the report. It does reference going to Europe though, which I'm not.

 

Here's an interesting one - Turkey isn't on the "red list" at the moment. Turkey is allowing a small number of supporters into grounds. What if we play City in the CL Final? What would be stopping significant numbers of mostly vaccinated UK supporters travelling, but if the game was at Wembley, there would only be20k?

[Sugar Ape]

5 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

Yea - tough to move beyond the bolded here.

 

Are any countries really exporting anything? As in, bore the cost of development and then shipping to a country who didn't. The EU representing a bunch of countries doesn't change that. They are buying from manufacturers.

China and Russia maybe? But it’s worth more to those countries politically to curry favour with other nations than it is to vaccinate their own people, especially China where they pretty much stopped covid dead even without a vaccine. 
 

Plus the leadership of those countries don’t give a fuck what their own citizens think of them. Not like you’re allowed to vote Putin out of power. 

[SasaS]

Additional problem may be that the bigger countries are obviously looking at the need to have their own vaccine from a strategic perspective.

 France is now recommending AZ to be administered only to the over 55s. Is it a coincidence that Sanofi / Pasteur vaccine which they hope may be ready for Q2 or Q3 rollout does not have great test results on older population, so no harm done if they are taken care of by AZ.  Why did Switzerland order 5 million  of AZ but never approved it. Why is US sitting on 9 million stockpile of AZ and also never approved it, despite the fact it has been rolled out in the UK full four months ago. Why is Russian sovereign fund behind the exports of Sputnik now saying they expect a visit from EMA in mid- April with a view of approval some time in June? No rush. But they are already telling you, forget about summer holiday abroad.