So, coronavirus...

[GogLais]

Nothing more than what some people were saying about the unemployed over the last ten years or what you average Tory says in private.

Didn't Clarkson want Union leaders to be taken out and shot?

Jo Cox hadn’t been assassinated then although I have to accept that doesn’t affect how the law is now drafted or imposed.

[Raggs]

More and more countries looking to approve the vaccine for 12+, lots already doing 16+. UK has done really well with adult population, but if we don't do kids, we're going to fall behind.

[Saint]

More and more countries looking to approve the vaccine for 12+, lots already doing 16+. UK has done really well with adult population, but if we don't do kids, we're going to fall behind.

Yeah. I think this is one we're going to be forced into by the global community regardless of what the JVCI recommends

[BnM]

131 today.

[TheNatalShark]

UK begins its world leading vaccine donation programme, starting with 9mm beginning shipping this week, 5mm to Covax and 4mm directly to partners.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-b ... mmediately

[Calculon]

nine million vaccines to be donated bilaterally and offered to COVAX to help tackle COVID-19 abroad

Why include the word "offered"? Would it not be better just to say: "donated bilaterally and to COVAX, to help tackle....". Not a native speaker, so maybe I'm wrong on this?

[Insane_Homer]

My son, turns 18 in Oct, has got appoint to get first jab tomorrow

He's got no underlying health issues.

So on Sat morning we get a text saying it's cancelled as he's under 17 yrs and 9 months of age.

He's 17 years, 8 months and 27 days old...

My wife took him anyway, they didn't get it done, but managed to rebook for this Friday, when he'll be 17yrs and 9 month+.

Friday appointment now cancelled too, they're needing to ration doses. Looks like supplies are running low.

[Calculon]

Excess AZ, but not enough Biontech/Pfizer

[TheNatalShark]

nine million vaccines to be donated bilaterally and offered to COVAX to help tackle COVID-19 abroad

Why include the word "offered"? Would it not be better just to say: "donated bilaterally and to COVAX, to help tackle....". Not a native speaker, so maybe I'm wrong on this?

That's getting down to the very nitty gritty that is almost hopelessly speculative without direct info oversight, but looking at the notes to editors the donated doses will be transported at UK cost to destination and have been agreed. Covax will have to accept the vaccines "offered", and there may be an exchange from funding pools and logistics cost covering. Most likely some form of legalese.


Separately finally got a text for second dose next Tuesday. I've had friends who are travelling home and got 2nd doses within 8 weeks, I tried my luck y/day and was turned away (empty clinic). Ho hum.

[Saint]

9 million doses = 4-5 weeks production (on average). Which more or less equates to the winding down of AZ vaccination in the UK.

At a guess, anything coming out of AZ for further UK use will be Delta or another variant specific; in the meantime it looks like the UK is holding AZ to the UK contract

[Calculon]

nine million vaccines to be donated bilaterally and offered to COVAX to help tackle COVID-19 abroad

Why include the word "offered"? Would it not be better just to say: "donated bilaterally and to COVAX, to help tackle....". Not a native speaker, so maybe I'm wrong on this?

That's getting down to the very nitty gritty that is almost hopelessly speculative without direct info oversight, but looking at the notes to editors the donated doses will be transported at UK cost to destination and have been agreed. Covax will have to accept the vaccines "offered", and there may be an exchange from funding pools and logistics cost covering. Most likely some form of legalese.


Separately finally got a text for second dose next Tuesday. I've had friends who are travelling home and got 2nd doses within 8 weeks, I tried my luck y/day and was turned away (empty clinic). Ho hum.

Oh, that didn't even cross my mind. It does mention donations to COVAX later in the article though.

[fishfoodie]

Suggestions someone is playing with the numbers !

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-uks ... e-12366866

COVID-19: UK's daily coronavirus data 'looks a bit fishy' - as major symptom study suggests cases on the rise

Professor Spector, the man behind the ZOE COVID Symptom Study, says reduced coronavirus testing and the impact of the "pingdemic" could be behind the "suspicious" drop in the number of daily cases recorded by the government.
...

His study has shown "around 60,000 cases a day" are reported, whereas latest government figures released on Wednesday suggest 27,734 tested positive in the last 24 hours.

Of the roughly 60,000 testing positive according to ZOE data, 36,000 of those are unvaccinated and 24,000 have received at least one dose.

He said: "This 60,000 figure is still a lot of people, it's one in 84 people roughly who have at any point in time still some infection or symptoms of the condition".

Talking about the decline in cases in the data released by the Department of Health, Prof Spector said: "It's dropped something like 30% in two days, which is pretty much unheard of in pandemics, and remember this is happening without restrictions, without lockdowns, without some sudden event.

[Mahoney]

There is no suggestion in that article of anyone playing with the numbers.

The suggestion is that the case numbers may be accidentally misleading; that perhaps the number of people reporting a positive test each day is dropping for a reason other than a drop in number of people being infected.

[Mahoney]

(The patients admitted number seems a much more reliable metric to me than cases; cases are always going to be heavily dependent on who you test, when you test, how much you test, how well you test, the circumstances in which you test etc. etc. etc. People who are struggling to breathe normally end up in hospital.)

[Marylandolorian]

There is no suggestion in that article of anyone playing with the numbers.

The suggestion is that the case numbers may be accidentally misleading; that perhaps the number of people reporting a positive test each day is dropping for a reason other than a drop in number of people being infected.

This type of headline is one of the reason making people believe it’s almost over.

“ UK is reopening and scientists are confused to what's happening - numbers are going down”. They are confused, really! It’s the same thing everywhere .

[Saint]

(The patients admitted number seems a much more reliable metric to me than cases; cases are always going to be heavily dependent on who you test, when you test, how much you test, how well you test, the circumstances in which you test etc. etc. etc. People who are struggling to breathe normally end up in hospital.)

There are indications taht hospital admissions might be peaking.

Surge testing likely drastically impacts the positive test rate - so it;s possible that while testing is currently seeing a reduction in positive tests, that could just be a short term statistical aberration

[tc27]

(The patients admitted number seems a much more reliable metric to me than cases; cases are always going to be heavily dependent on who you test, when you test, how much you test, how well you test, the circumstances in which you test etc. etc. etc. People who are struggling to breathe normally end up in hospital.)

There are indications taht hospital admissions might be peaking.

Surge testing likely drastically impacts the positive test rate - so it;s possible that while testing is currently seeing a reduction in positive tests, that could just be a short term statistical aberration

Does seem to be the case - positive tests generally lead admissions and deaths by a couple of weeks so I am optimistic this will go the right way.

[Mahoney]

The lines on the right still look pretty straight to me. I've zoomed in like this to accentuate any change in angle, but I can't see one.

From https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

[Mahoney]

My graph is on a linear scale, not a log one. To my eyes the current wave has seen patients admitted & patients in hospital increase linearly for the last month, and there's no sign yet of that stopping.

[tc27]

Possibly as Oliver Johnson is using a log scale graph?

FWIW I have followed him since March last year and he's not prone to undue optimism.

[Saint]

In somewhat surprising news, AZ announced today it will be applying for FDA approval in the US.

[Dinsdale Piranha]

In somewhat surprising news, AZ announced today it will be applying for FDA approval in the US.

I wonder if that's mainly to make it easier for Europeans to travel to the US when vaxxed.

[Biffer]

In somewhat surprising news, AZ announced today it will be applying for FDA approval in the US.

I wonder if that's mainly to make it easier for Europeans to travel to the US when vaxxed.

And Canadians.

[Saint]

In somewhat surprising news, AZ announced today it will be applying for FDA approval in the US.

I wonder if that's mainly to make it easier for Europeans to travel to the US when vaxxed.

More or less my thoughts, except that it would be to cover the Canadian border. Lots of US manufactured AZ deployed in Canada, and to a lesser extent Mexico

[tc27]

Cant be any reason to deny authorisation to AZ now..even the cynical mercatilism need to protect US pharma surely now moot.

[Saint]

Cant be any reason to deny authorisation to AZ now..even the cynical mercatilism need to protect US pharma surely now moot.

Approve but don't use will be the order of the day. Also makes it easier for the US to authorise exports

[Raggs]

Just reading that Delta spreads twice as fast as the original, and also causes more than double the hospitalisations of Alpha (Kent), which in turn was more likely to cause hospitalisation than the original. I think when you add it together you get something like 4x more likely to put someone in hospital.



CDC also showing the same thing as these earlier studies.

[fishfoodie]

India was probably the worst possible place for Delta to surface; with studies estimating four million excess deaths in India, over the pandemic

[Rinkals]

India was probably the worst possible place for Delta to surface; with studies estimating four million excess deaths in India, over the pandemic

It's all very well for you rich nations and your "I'm all right, Jack" attitudes, but here in the 3rd World, we are currently incubating variants which could potentially make your vaccines impotent, your hospitals and mortuaries overloaded and your drug companies fantastically wealthy.

[Raggs]

India was probably the worst possible place for Delta to surface; with studies estimating four million excess deaths in India, over the pandemic

It's all very well for you rich nations and your "I'm all right, Jack" attitudes, but here in the 3rd World, we are currently incubating variants which could potentially make your vaccines impotent, your hospitals and mortuaries overloaded and your drug companies fantastically wealthy.

And here we are with a billion vaccines sat in stock too....

Oh wait, no we aren't. Vaccines are basically getting injected into people as fast as they're being produced for the most part, with doses held back to ensure they can have the essential second jab. Giving people just a single jab of a 2 jab vaccine would be absolutely dangerous, in a very similar manner to only taking half an antibiotics course.

[Slick]

India was probably the worst possible place for Delta to surface; with studies estimating four million excess deaths in India, over the pandemic

It's all very well for you rich nations and your "I'm all right, Jack" attitudes, but here in the 3rd World, we are currently incubating variants which could potentially make your vaccines impotent, your hospitals and mortuaries overloaded and your drug companies fantastically wealthy.

How is your vaccination development programme going?

[Rinkals]

India was probably the worst possible place for Delta to surface; with studies estimating four million excess deaths in India, over the pandemic

It's all very well for you rich nations and your "I'm all right, Jack" attitudes, but here in the 3rd World, we are currently incubating variants which could potentially make your vaccines impotent, your hospitals and mortuaries overloaded and your drug companies fantastically wealthy.

How is your vaccination development programme going?

I don't think you quite understand the point of my post.

We don't have a vaccination development programme.

Which is why the virus will be able to mutate to ever more dangerous configurations which may even end up affecting the wealthy.

[sockwithaticket]

India was probably the worst possible place for Delta to surface; with studies estimating four million excess deaths in India, over the pandemic

It's all very well for you rich nations and your "I'm all right, Jack" attitudes, but here in the 3rd World, we are currently incubating variants which could potentially make your vaccines impotent, your hospitals and mortuaries overloaded and your drug companies fantastically wealthy.

Since most developed nations are still in the process of vaccinating their adult populations (those that wish to be...) and aren't sitting on stockpiles of unused vaccines I'm struggling to think what it is you're criticising here. Once their own houses are in order, as far as that's possible, they'll look further out. It's very much a 'put your own oxygen mask on first' situation really.

[Slick]

It's all very well for you rich nations and your "I'm all right, Jack" attitudes, but here in the 3rd World, we are currently incubating variants which could potentially make your vaccines impotent, your hospitals and mortuaries overloaded and your drug companies fantastically wealthy.

How is your vaccination development programme going?

I don't think you quite understand the point of my post.

We don't have a vaccination development programme.

Which is why the virus will be able to mutate to ever more dangerous configurations which may even end up affecting the wealthy.

Well lucky for you that the rich nations you are disparaging do.

[Biffer]

It's all very well for you rich nations and your "I'm all right, Jack" attitudes, but here in the 3rd World, we are currently incubating variants which could potentially make your vaccines impotent, your hospitals and mortuaries overloaded and your drug companies fantastically wealthy.

How is your vaccination development programme going?

I don't think you quite understand the point of my post.

We don't have a vaccination development programme.

Which is why the virus will be able to mutate to ever more dangerous configurations which may even end up affecting the wealthy.

We can't just snap our fingers and make 16 billion doses of vaccine.

In eighteen months we've managed through international effort of developed and developing nations, to create multiple different vaccines and get 4 billion shots into people. Those 4 billion have been done in 6 months or so. So even at current levels of production with nothing new coming on stream that'd get to 16 billion sometime towards the end of 2022 - but production is increasing all the time. I think between us all globally, we could get up towards everyone being vaccinated by mid 2022. But I don't see how it can be done any sooner.

There's then an argument about should you vaccinate vulnerable people globally before the wider population - that's a valid question but has valid answers from a public health perspective in both directions. If you aim for the former first, you don't prevent epidemic spread anywhere in the world until you do it everywhere, which allows more production of variants and higher risk of vaccine escape, for example. And that's before politics comes into play (It's very, very hard for any politician in any country to say they're going to protect foreign citizens before their own - that's not nice, might not be moral, but it's true).

There have been failures / problems / delays otherwise more would have been produced - Pfizer, AZ, Moderna haven't ramped up at the fastest rate they projected, not because they want people to die but because this shit is fucking difficult. The Sanofi vaccine failed to be effective. Novavax have struggled to scale production.

Most of us aren't thinking 'I'm alright Jack'.

The next 6 months, should, I hope, bring really significant numbers of vaccines into Covax. Then we can start to see an impact more globally.

[Rinkals]

How is your vaccination development programme going?

I don't think you quite understand the point of my post.

We don't have a vaccination development programme.

Which is why the virus will be able to mutate to ever more dangerous configurations which may even end up affecting the wealthy.

Well lucky for you that the rich nations you are disparaging do.

I'm not disparaging.

I'm suggesting that there should be a moratorium on the IP of the vaccine in the interests of getting developing nations vaccinated because those are the places that will find social distancing and personal hygiene difficult and those are the places where the various strains are going to emerge.

It doesn't make sense to me that richer nation vaccinate themselves but allow the virus to incubate and develop resistance outside of their cloistered communities.

[Rinkals]

How is your vaccination development programme going?

I don't think you quite understand the point of my post.

We don't have a vaccination development programme.

Which is why the virus will be able to mutate to ever more dangerous configurations which may even end up affecting the wealthy.

We can't just snap our fingers and make 16 billion doses of vaccine.

In eighteen months we've managed through international effort of developed and developing nations, to create multiple different vaccines and get 4 billion shots into people. Those 4 billion have been done in 6 months or so. So even at current levels of production with nothing new coming on stream that'd get to 16 billion sometime towards the end of 2022 - but production is increasing all the time. I think between us all globally, we could get up towards everyone being vaccinated by mid 2022. But I don't see how it can be done any sooner.

There's then an argument about should you vaccinate vulnerable people globally before the wider population - that's a valid question but has valid answers from a public health perspective in both directions. If you aim for the former first, you don't prevent epidemic spread anywhere in the world until you do it everywhere, which allows more production of variants and higher risk of vaccine escape, for example. And that's before politics comes into play (It's very, very hard for any politician in any country to say they're going to protect foreign citizens before their own - that's not nice, might not be moral, but it's true).

There have been failures / problems / delays otherwise more would have been produced - Pfizer, AZ, Moderna haven't ramped up at the fastest rate they projected, not because they want people to die but because this shit is fucking difficult. The Sanofi vaccine failed to be effective. Novavax have struggled to scale production.

Most of us aren't thinking 'I'm alright Jack'.

The next 6 months, should, I hope, bring really significant numbers of vaccines into Covax. Then we can start to see an impact more globally.

As you like.

You can shrug your shoulders and say that you can't do anything about it.

Fair enough, but in the interim the virus mutates and becomes more dangerous.

[Dinsdale Piranha]

I don't think you quite understand the point of my post.

We don't have a vaccination development programme.

Which is why the virus will be able to mutate to ever more dangerous configurations which may even end up affecting the wealthy.

Well lucky for you that the rich nations you are disparaging do.

I'm not disparaging.

I'm suggesting that there should be a moratorium on the IP of the vaccine in the interests of getting developing nations vaccinated because those are the places that will find social distancing and personal hygiene difficult and those are the places where the various strains are going to emerge.

It doesn't make sense to me that richer nation vaccinate themselves but allow the virus to incubate and develop resistance outside of their cloistered communities.

If only there was a vaccine that was made available globally, to be produced in multiple countries and sold at cost that could be used..

[Saint]

I don't think you quite understand the point of my post.

We don't have a vaccination development programme.

Which is why the virus will be able to mutate to ever more dangerous configurations which may even end up affecting the wealthy.

Well lucky for you that the rich nations you are disparaging do.

I'm not disparaging.

I'm suggesting that there should be a moratorium on the IP of the vaccine in the interests of getting developing nations vaccinated because those are the places that will find social distancing and personal hygiene difficult and those are the places where the various strains are going to emerge.

It doesn't make sense to me that richer nation vaccinate themselves but allow the virus to incubate and develop resistance outside of their cloistered communities.

Haven't we been round the houses on this already? Let's say we suspend IP on Pfizer and Moderna right now. Problem 1 is that the factories are hard to build and expensive. Problem 2 - there's a distinct lack of expertise. Problem 3 is they take 8-12 months to bring each one online. So all in all, you're not going to get the manufacturing base any quicker than they;re currently scaling.

And that's all before we get into actual production. 1 - Again, distinct lack of expertise and knowledge sharing will take a lot of time. 2 - Supply chain. This stuff doesn't use off the shelf components, or grow in breeder reactors - the entire supply chain is incredibly limited and scale on some of that may be even more difficult.

The trouble with a lot of the new tech vaccines is that we simply don't have the manufacturing base yet for global scale production. Now, if you wanted to scale a vaccine like AZ, within limits we can actually do that with existing manufacturing. Even then, we run into trouble - most of that manufacturing base was already running at 60-70% capacity producing OTHER vaccines for OTHER viruses that we still need to produce. SO even then, bringing new production online will still take a LOT of time. And that's all work that's already happening at pace globally. As an example in the UK, a manufacturing facility suitable for AZ should be coming online this summer, after an enormous injection of capital from the British government. That project was originally slated for completion NEXT year, at the end of a 4-5 year build cycle.

An IP Moratorium achieves precisely f*ck all in terms of ramping global production.

[Rinkals]

I don't think South Africa and India are quite the technology deserts you appear to think they are.