Oops

Has anyone seen anything reported about timescales for people in the bottom tier (ie the rest of the population).

I'm in this group. I do want to get vaccinated, but at this stage I think I'll be lucky to be vaccinated before December 2021. Does that sound too pessimistic?

Listening to a piece on Newsnight yesterday, they were saying that although the vaccine will prevent you getting ill, they dont believe that it will prevent those people continuing to spread the virus, although, they are still researching this aspect.

I think in a couple of months we'll have a resurrection of the whole herd immunity, get em back to the offices debate.

The argument will be - we're vaccinating the vulnerable, but rather than wait for the under 50s with no underlying health conditions to get vaccinated, they should go back to life as normal as the death rate is low for them anyway. The virus will then circulate rapidly among them but it will build immunity hopefully without the hospitalisations and deaths that will overwhelm the NHS.

The problem with this argument will be the people who get long covid symptoms and become long term users of the NHS and are compromised in terms of being able to work. Employers will likely be pushing people to get back to the office but then if they get long covid symptoms and have time off sick we will start hearing about 'UK workers taking too much sick time" (no doubt with provocative Daily Mail comments about this being the new 'middle class excuse disease') and employers will show them little sympathy and kick them on to the benefits system.

Also given what a cock up they made of test and trace I wouldn't be surprised if this vaccine roll out ends up riddled with delays especially once a private contractor gets involved with the distribution and it all gets screwed up. The UK now is starting to resemble a developing country where you get a plan for some logistics or health project like building water systems or rolling out a vaccination programme, aid money comes in and development agencies are on the ground ready to deliver it, but they have to deal with the domestic government and the money gets siphoned off to some contractor with contacts in the relevant Ministry, who is more interested in benefiting personally, and the underlying project gets screwed over.

I can see the headlines, 6 months down the line, as we enter our 5th national lockdown.

"It all looked so promising in December"

As you say, they don't know that yet and are still working on it. It's very difficult to determine that in a short time, usually this stuff takes years and years to work out. I would be surprised if any vaccine didn't significantly reduce the chances of a vaccinated individual to transmit the virus. The vaccine will reduce viral load and that should (in theory) reduce the chances of it spreading from that individual to another.

Thought Fauci was being a bit of a dick yesterday. The FDA is not the "gold standard" for regulatory approval, what they are is the gatekeeper to the largest drug market in the world - so surprise, surprise, everyone develops product to fit their model. In fact they made fools of themselves early on in the pandemic by giving out EUA's to every pile of crap test that came along including giving an EUA to Hydroxychloroquine back in March which they then had to revoke in June. So they will spend an extra week looking at the Pfizer data before approval - big deal. I suppose anything to give the American Moderna vaccine a chance to "catch up".

They have a different way of validating their vaccines.
Apparently, "we" have taken the data on "trust" but, the Americans will do their own trials before just accepting the date from Pfizer.
In fairness, this seems the right thing to do although I'm happy to accept that this stuff is beyond my pay grade

The Americans are always having to guard against legal recriminations so, theres really no driver to be first past the post. Mid table anonominity is a much safer place.

I work for the Department of Health & Social Care but for these purposes I presume that I don't work IN Health & Social Care. So could be 2nd on the list or 11th.

Quote ="wrencat1873"They have a different way of validating their vaccines. Apparently, "we" have taken the data on "trust" but, the Americans will do their own trials before just accepting the date from Pfizer. In fairness, this seems the right thing to do although I'm happy to accept that this stuff is beyond my pay grade '" What they actually said was that they will review the data a little longer - about 10 days. The "trials" have already been done. Data has been shared from the start of work on safety and efficacy for the purpose of speeding up the approvals process. The issue they have is the massive anti-vax movement in the US which dwarfs what we have here. I may have been a bit harsh on Fauci, he was pushed by an over the top Sky reporter bragging about the UK being first. He's got a much tougher (stupider) audience in the US to satisfy. They are totally invested in the Pfizer vaccine and have been for months. https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/explain ... index.html

Quote ="wrencat1873"They have a different way of validating their vaccines. Apparently, "we" have taken the data on "trust" but, the Americans will do their own trials before just accepting the date from Pfizer. In fairness, this seems the right thing to do although I'm happy to accept that this stuff is beyond my pay grade '" What they actually said was that they will review the data a little longer - about 10 days. The "trials" have already been done. Data has been shared from the start of work on safety and efficacy for the purpose of speeding up the approvals process. The issue they have is the massive anti-vax movement in the US which dwarfs what we have here. I may have been a bit harsh on Fauci, he was pushed by an over the top Sky reporter bragging about the UK being first. He's got a much tougher (stupider) audience in the US to satisfy. They are totally invested in the Pfizer vaccine and have been for months. https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/explain ... index.html

European governments are underwriting vaccine companies for such eventualities.

Rupert Murdoch, health tourist, has got his jab on the NHS just as his top Fox News man, Tucker Carlson, is sowing doubt around the coronavirus vaccines.

What a time to be alive.

Does it work on this new strain?

No reason to think it won't. There are already several strains, 9 I think, the original L strain is pretty much extinct now.

Can't help but think that it's going to take far longer to vaccinate than is being put about by the government. All this "back to some sort of normality by Easter" stuff is very optimistic indeed. We've heard this sort of thing before.

The Oxford/AZ vaccine should be approved very soon - my guess is by end of month. There are huge stocks of this and it's really easy to transport and store, and will be almost immediately ready for mass roll out. Also, you don't have to be somewhere that can deal with massive allergic reactions when they give you it. I strongly suspect that the military have been planning for a mass vaccination program and are being (or have been trained already) to give it.

If I was to guess at the conversations going on between scientists and government they might be along the lines of imposing a severe shutdown (Tier 4) because mass vaccine roll out is very close. It would make sense to take a short term hit on freedoms etc. to cut cases, to mitigate that the vaccine roll out should open things up considerably by Easter.

UK population is currently around 66 million. Even if we vaccinated a million a week it would take 66 weeks to vaccinate everyone.

Anyone know what the total figure was in the first week of vaccinations? About 138k. It would take just over 9 years to vaccinate everyone at that rate. You've got to think they'll get up to some decent speed, but all this talk of it being over by Easter is pie in the sky stuff. Maybe Easter 2023.

Don't we all need two doses - so does that double the time needed?

Two doses are required, about 4 weeks apart, I think. There's no way everyone will be getting them by Easter 2021.

Was there ever any plans for everybody to get vaccine ?
I was under the impression they weren't bothering with under 16s(don't think its even licensed for them),you would also need to remove people that don't want it ?
Sure i read the nine priority groups represent about 25% of population,but these nine groups account for over 90% of the deaths.
So i would think we need to get approx 16m - 17m vaccinated before we can get back to some normality.

Have you tried of the vaccine calculator?

[urlhttps://www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-uk[/url

Next spring for me

Some time between June and September, for me.

I wouldn't take that as gospel. Lots of variables to factor in and I doubt that calculator has done all that.

That would help but even with the army helping out I can't see the beginning of any major improvement in the situation this side of April. Trusts up and down the country are advertising for vaccinators but there aren't the people with the requisite expertise available. The few that have had the Pfizer vacc have only had small amounts. The admin of getting people vaccinated is incredibly laborious too. It's not just a case of jabbing someone in the arm as I'm sure you know. It can take you a couple of hours to do a dozen or so people.

I think the government need to manage expectations better - the PM has over promised since this began and by the summer people will be desperate not to go through all this again.

Nah. Johnson will promise the earth and fail to deliver, again. Tory apologists will blame liberals and lefties for talking the government down and not getting behind even more of Johnson's lies.