# The US Jab



## D_W (28 Feb 2021)

I know you guys think we can't do public health in the US, but we can - we just end up doing some of it through public providers, and some private.

Class 1A here has been opened up not just to the elderly and really fat, but also to the moderately fat (like me). What's that? BMI 30. I just barely skid over the line at 205 and 5'9". I remember the says of getting to 160 pounds and thinking it was impossibly fat and I must get back to 145. Now, I'd like to get back to 160.

But, anyway, I'm the last adult in my entire extended family who isn't vaccinated - until Friday.

Class 1A BMI dropped from 40 to 30 to the lower cutoff and I at 30.something got in. All other relatives have either had covid, work in health care, are older, etc, have child care, dental licenses, etc. IT's bizarre -every single adult that is a first degree relative or in law has functional immunity and before the threshold was lowered, I was a huge potential fly in the ointment.

Here's how it went down - my health system is gigantic. They blew their vaccine wad on their employees, contractors, subcontractors, etc, with nothing left for anyone other than their nursing home patients. So they have been bombarding me with emails after I signed up for the class 1A to wait for them to get more allocation. Too bad, one of their competitors got it and is dosing shots at the baseball stadium in some figure like 4,000 a day.

I went, it was super orderly with a long moving line, took ten minutes, I sat in a large open area to confirm no shock and that was that. The lady flatly said to me "you're getting pfizer today, your second appointment is already scheduled exact same place and same time in 3 weeks, see you then. The scheduling is automatic and we cannot change it".

Perfect, I don't want a million options, just get the job done.

Everyone was pleasant, professional, the health system employees were all over the place outside on the road and in the parking lot helping to direct everyone - it was like white glove service. All you needed was a form of ID at the door and you were in and out with your card reminding where to go.

We are to get 150MM more doses or something before the end of March here. Covid cases are at 1/5th the level that they were 2 months ago and both vaccines seem to have no issues with any variant. Things are looking up.

(no symptoms from the first jab, either, aside from very mild shoulder soreness yesterday. I've dropped ice cubes on toes before and had more pain than that).

The reason for not having a gaggle of options here (as in right in my locale - normally for flu shots you get bombarded with options, spam, etc, to get your flu shot in various places) in the first place (counties around here and rural where my parents live were vaccinated long ago) is that our large health systems have HQs here with their contractors being here. In our county, the allotment was used quickly in nursing home and health system staffs. I wouldn't be surprised if out of the 1.2 million people in my county, that at least 50k were health care (as one of the systems itself has more than that in total staff - just not all in our county).

The anti-vaccine sentiment that the news drums up along with all of the other scare rubbish? It's not here on the ground.

I actually saw a news story today that said that the decline in tests (40% decline in covid tests to go along with the 80% decline in cases) may punish us by not finding all of the new covid cases as the government turns from testing to vaccinating. It totally glossed over the fact that there are three times as many tests being given now per positive case - the tests are down 40% because there isn't anyone to administer them to. I'm surprised they're even that high.

Deaths are a trailing indicator, so we still have relatively high deaths occurring from the longer term cases, but even those are down off of the peak and continue to trend down. It's almost as if such good news isn't worth talking about because it's not profitable.


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## Inspector (28 Feb 2021)

Glad for you.
As of the 17th of February our provincial government has only given just over of 50,000 doses and that includes the ones that got both jabs. My wife a nurse has had both of hers but without doses to give they are coming in little dribbles. I don't honestly expect to be able to get a jab until maybe mid-summer if I'm lucky. The governments, both federal and provincial, did too little, too late, to secure vaccines and as there are no vaccine producing labs in all of Canada we are in a long line of countries needing it. They could have set up production labs during the last year so that when one became available they could get domestic production going. Oh well in the mean time I will continue to wear my mask and stay away from people as much as possible.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/covid-19-vaccine-rollout-saskatchewan-1.5917032



Pete


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## D_W (1 Mar 2021)

I recall hearing early that Canada was dragging their feet on either adopting another vaccine or doing research in country that would lead to a vaccine, but that was months ago. Sorry to hear that it didn't pick up from there (the avenue that I heard through was actually a Canadian dr. guesting on an English youtube channel several times). 

Despite the news reports here of the supposedly enormous number of people who wouldn't get vaccinated, the impatience about getting it done is 10 times as strong.


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## clogs (1 Mar 2021)

....just to add, 
my daughter is a Paramedic trainee....in a v/large health service just outside London...
front line staff I would have thought........she's in the thick of it......
I asked when she would get her jab......she just laughed.......not enough to go around......
I'm still self isolating, she can have mine.......

please take care out there.....


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## Jacob (1 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> I know you guys think we can't do public health in the US, .......


We've done worse here than USA in terms of deaths per million, if that's any consolation!
USA 1,582 UK 1,803
Don't know if Trump deserves any credit, but Johnson certainly can be blamed for our pathetic scenario.


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## AJB Temple (1 Mar 2021)

Meaningless comparison ^. Population demographics are radically different.


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## Jacob (1 Mar 2021)

AJB Temple said:


> Meaningless comparison ^. Population demographics are radically different.


So it could be even worse than it looks?
UK is world worst of comparable demographics.








Could the UK have avoided its terrible Covid-19 death toll?


This Mail on Sunday investigation will try and determine why the UK has suffered one of the world's worst Covid-19 death rates by asking the difficult questions about the handling of the pandemic.




www.dailymail.co.uk


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## Inspector (1 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> I recall hearing early that Canada was dragging their feet on either adopting another vaccine or doing research in country that would lead to a vaccine, but that was months ago. Sorry to hear that it didn't pick up from there (the avenue that I heard through was actually a Canadian dr. guesting on an English youtube channel several times).



The Mulroney government in the late 80's early 90's privatized a world leading government owned vaccine research and production facilities. They were later sold off to off shore companies and they were shut down here. Hence no government labs. SARS didn't wake up the government either. The reason we aren't getting any doses is because the government didn't order any until too late. We are getting both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. I don't know if the government is in line for any others. 

A vaccine developed by the University here is in the first stage of clinical trials and if the trials are successful the vaccine might be ready for production at the end of this year. VIDO’s COVID-19 vaccine receives Health Canada clinical trial approval
Maybe that's the one I'll get jabbed with. Who knows. 

Pete


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## D_W (1 Mar 2021)

Vaccine research here is private in general. IT's probably cheaper to have a private vaccine research arm but provide public dollars when you want them to do something. If there are two better vaccines than pfizer and moderna, I don't know what they are. 

Locally here (in my city) we have a private system that does its own vaccine research. The had a viable candidate almost as quickly as they started on one (it would've been a mini needle patch), but I guess weren't selected to move on further. Their candidate showed efficacy nearly right away. Why? because they did research on SARS 1 and adapted a patch that they'd made for that. 

In my opinion, too much excuse is made by governments and public officials that nothing was done because some capacity was made private. It was likely made private due to problems. We have a fusion reactor project here in the US - at least one. In the 70s, it as seen sort of as a public entitlement . I'm sure they made some gains, but they wasted huge amounts of money without accounting for much. If public entitlements are left like that, they eventually lower the standard of living for a simple reason - if we don't demand some sort of results by unit of resources, we won't get them. 

We're seeing the same thing in space exploration here - SpaceX profitably launches loads and astronauts cheaper than the Chinese can now. Nasa would've had no hope. 

I'd lay the blame on the provinces there not due to lack of a vaccine group - you could end up putting all of your eggs in one basket that way given the size of canada - but due to lack of moving to incent both private research and put precedent on acquiring foreign supplies (like the US). 

I'm sure our vaccines cost more than some of the international versions, but that's kind of how we operate in the US, I guess. We'll get it to you first, and it'll be good, but it may be 10 times the cost of a russian or chinese version if such a thing comes up as viable. There's a profit motive to get it distributed here, too, and that helps make it happen quickly.


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## D_W (1 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> We've done worse here than USA in terms of deaths per million, if that's any consolation!
> USA 1,582 UK 1,803
> Don't know if Trump deserves any credit, but Johnson certainly can be blamed for our pathetic scenario.



Not sure most people would feel the same, but I like the balance we had here. You could choose to do something dumb (many did), but for most of us, it was possible to remain safe. Front liners here got vaccinated early (most were given adequate protection - my wife works in health care and nobody in her office got covid that they know of despite never shutting down patient contact). 

I sure did see a lot of white hair at restaurants when they reopened, though. I was standing outside with a mask on to pick up take-away, and the white hair was going in to sit down and eat. Bonkers.


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## D_W (1 Mar 2021)

(I went back and checked our local vaccine candidate - by April 2, they'd proven Sars-2 antibodies in mice treated with the vaccine in enough quantity to fight the disease - at that time, I wanted to volunteer to receive that trial, but the option was never made available. I think the reality is there were so many candidates here that many were viable and were never picked because they weren't needed.).


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## Jacob (1 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> Vaccine research here is private in general. IT's probably cheaper to have a private vaccine research arm but provide public dollars when you want them to do something. If there are two better vaccines than pfizer and moderna, I don't know what they are.
> 
> Locally here (in my city) we have a private system that does its own vaccine research. The had a viable candidate almost as quickly as they started on one (it would've been a mini needle patch), but I guess weren't selected to move on further. Their candidate showed efficacy nearly right away. Why? because they did research on SARS 1 and adapted a patch that they'd made for that.
> 
> ...


Cuba deaths per million 29
USA " " " 1,584


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## PUtcvNqa (1 Mar 2021)

Somalia, Yemen, Haiti & Angola even lower than that
Its amazing


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## cowtown_eric (2 Mar 2021)

I'm in Alberta., a province. It is not likely known to other countries, but the CDN federal government releases the vacines and testing to the provinces ( whom have the responsibility for health care) for distribution. Our AB provincial government has been sadly lacking in problems of planning for distribution but public outrage seems to be having an effect on them., and things are seemingly progressing. 

Trying to keep safe, as I trust all you woodbutchers are too!

Eric


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## TominDales (2 Mar 2021)

Inspector said:


> Glad for you.
> As of the 17th of February our provincial government has only given just over of 50,000 doses and that includes the ones that got both jabs. My wife a nurse has had both of hers but without doses to give they are coming in little dribbles. I don't honestly expect to be able to get a jab until maybe mid-summer if I'm lucky. The governments, both federal and provincial, did too little, too late, to secure vaccines and as there are no vaccine producing labs in all of Canada we are in a long line of countries needing it. They could have set up production labs during the last year so that when one became available they could get domestic production going. Oh well in the mean time I will continue to wear my mask and stay away from people as much as possible.
> 
> 
> ...


Sorry to hear this, Canada is often a poster child or doing things well. I'm involved in the vaccine R&D programme, and my guess is that global production will ramp quite quickly and you will be flooded with material earlier than that. Most large economies including UK US, EU, and Canada, had to place early bets on a number of candidates as they could not tell which would work. India is a powerhouse of vaccine manufacture and the command economies also have production. The result is the west will have 4x more than it needs and will start to give it away. The giant factories in India will start to come on stream. Canada has a lot of good will due to its good general diplomacy, so will likely find a channel before long.
On the public vs private debate, Vaccine work is a good example where public private partnerships work well. Vaccine development is very high risk, the money is made on the childhood staples, epidemic vaccines are usually big loss makers and done for good will - Ebola, Sars etc as they need to be prepared in advance and no-one buys without a pandemic, which only happens once is a generation. Note that the Pfizer jab was developed by a German small co. Moderna, AZ was a publicly funded venture by Oxford and UK government with industry muscle in manufacturing. There are lessons to be learned by the West, where complacency over Sars and Swine flue left us short. In my company case we had a Pandemic scale up centre bid to government turned down 3 years ago despite £50m of industry co-funding, it just didn't seem a priority back then and without the long term public money, industry just cant sustain something that is only used in an emergency. Industry is great as scaling up manufacturing and relativity quickly - after a development lead time - in 6 months, PPE, ventilators, vaccine production has gone from tick over to global scale. The public investment is about having the starting infrastructure available to shorten the lead times, this is something that can be done through co-operation between public and private entities and amongst neighboring states, its an insurance policy. Lots of lessons to learn. We will probably overreact to the pandemic and we will end up with a surplus of laboratories sitting around waiting for the next epidemic.....


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## D_W (2 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> Cuba deaths per million 29
> USA " " " 1,584



whoopee jacob. That doesn't make me wish I lived in Cuba. Italy, UK and US were ideal targets for the virus. Italy because of the back and forth with the Chinese, and the US and UK because we are tourist destinations in certain areas.

Cuba also does repression "real good". They sound like your kind of folks:









Cuba: Covid-19 Rules Used to Intensify Repression


Cuban authorities are using Covid-19 rules to expand their repressive tool kit against critics. This is part of a broader pattern in which Cuban authorities use any excuse to systematically repress dissent.




www.hrw.org







> (Washington, DC) – The Cuban government is using regulations designed to prevent the spread of Covid-19 to harass and imprison critics, Human Rights Watch said today.
> 
> On November 26, 2020, Cuban security forces detained 14 government critics in Havana after alleging that one of them had violated Covid-19 rules by failing to re-take a test for the coronavirus........



Fabulous.


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## D_W (2 Mar 2021)

cowtown_eric said:


> Our AB provincial government has been sadly lacking in problems of planning for distribution but public outrage seems to be having an effect on them., and things are seemingly progressing.



We had some of it at the state level here. 

Early on, we had excellent allocation of the vaccine, and the potential to train people to administer it in droves. The state government dragged their feet and said the current law didn't allow them to just provide funding for it. Of course, this was mentioned after it was questioned, and not before. You'd think that rather than opening the books and saying "ghee, can't do it - rules say no. That's the rules. What's for lunch?", someone would've concluded "I think we might have a big enough problem here that we should address it before someone asks about it". 

I guess we're waiting for a bigger problem. Distribution is in full force here now - staff to administer vaccine now outstrips supply.


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## Jacob (2 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> whoopee jacob. That doesn't make me wish I lived in Cuba. Italy, UK and US were ideal targets for the virus. Italy because of the back and forth with the Chinese, and the US and UK because we are tourist destinations in certain areas.


Excuses excuses! The simple fact is that both Trump and Johnson were in denial. Johnson caught up but not before achieving world beating death rates.


> Cuba also does repression "real good". They sound like your kind of folks:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


HRW tends to support United States foreign policy, particularly regarding Latin America.
Cuba is highly respected in terms of public health and also foreign medical aid. As an American you probably wouldn't know that D_W!





Criticism of Human Rights Watch







en.wikipedia.org


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## D_W (2 Mar 2021)

your posts are comical, Jacob. Like something I'd expect out of a 15 year old hoping to major in art.


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## mikej460 (2 Mar 2021)

So, I read posts quoting statistics as flawed, also different countries using different metrics, some countries with low outbreaks vs. low transient population yada yada. This isn't a p*ssing contest guys. Things are getting much better, but complacency is now the enemy; people who have had their jab(s) are feeling they can go back to normal and people who haven't (under 60s in the UK) see this and just copy their behaviour. Now we hear of people travelling from red list countries with new variants attempting to enter the UK without quarantining. It is still a dangerous world.


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## D_W (3 Mar 2021)

mikej460 said:


> So, I read posts quoting statistics as flawed



Who? As for the rest of the folks, if people jabbed can move freely, it's not an excuse for someone else to imitate them. That "it's not fair" rubbish without regard to outcomes needs to be stamped out. I'm fairly sure all of the mask rules here for people who have already had covid or jabs are just to try to get uniformity - and that the risk of those with some immunity would be too low to affect outcomes. )

but "we have to be fair" rather than teaching people how things work. 

Like the masks at the outset. We were to wash our hands all the time. I told my spouse that it was stupid, we'll watch the mailman and bulk warehouse workers. They'll have no choice but to touch thousands of items. What a surprise, they didn't sick. Anyone who went in a room did, but we were advised early on that nobody needed masks and you should be admonished if you wore your own N95 masks because only health care workers should have them. 

(wait, we don't really need masks, so what's the big emergency there? It was pretty transparent - the outcomes from locations with high hospitalization rates were from indoor areas with much breathing of "other peoples' stuff" ) Not from touching, but we're still getting nonstop rubbish about washing hands to make a difference. Garbage. 

As long as we're afraid of actually describing what works and why and with whom, we're destined for this groupist rubbish. 

I'm sure that the initial false information about not needing masks led to a lot of deaths, and that was intentional. Not the deaths for entertainment or some evil purpose, but hoarding supplies was put above the lives of people being misled. 

quotes of low infection rates from oppressive countries with minimal international travel are pointless, though. Many of the least desirable places in the world fared *really really well* for a long time at the outset of this thing. Wonder why.


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## mikej460 (3 Mar 2021)

Handwashing guidance, like all other guidance is scientifically based, but your counter to this is based on some sort of warped logic that everything we touch has been touched by someone else so why bother? My wife and I wipe all hard surface stuff we receive (including mail) with diluted bleach on a cloth then wash our hands, we also gel our hands whenever we go into a store etc. and when we leave, because we want to do all we can not to get or spread the virus. That's the responsible thing to do, what isn't responsible is to challenge and counter the scientifically led recommendations. The rules are there for a reason.


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## D_W (3 Mar 2021)

No, it's not scientifically based unless you say you can measure virus on a surface, but the question of viability and outcome isn't asked. If the letter carrier doesn't get sick, and neither do people stocking shelves with 100 times more exposure, then you know that touch transmission is very unlikely. As in immaterial. We measure outcome when it's available and not interim logic or quasilogic. If it seems logical that found virus on the surfaces could lead to transmission, but we find out that it doesn't and there's no evidence of it, then concluding that reasoning overrides outcome is anti scientific. 

If you propose one thing, and observe another, then the next time your observations become your proposal. If you cling to the former through many iterations despite the same observation, that's just ego getting in the way of truth. Or in some cases, worse.

I'd be willing to bet that more people died washing their hands and not wearing a mask in the first several weeks than died from touching things in the entire year.

Time and again when more information is provided about covid virus on surfaces, the footnote says none of the samples could be cultured. They're not viable and won't cause illness. Enclosed spaces and breathing droplets has been shown clearly to cause very poor outcomes with severity correlated with viral load floating in droplets and time exposure. 

This virus doesn't spread the same as a flu or whatever else. It has been very easy to observe the environments where it spreads quickly and situations where it doesn't.


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## D_W (3 Mar 2021)

mikej460 said:


> Handwashing guidance, like all other guidance is scientifically based, but your counter to this is based on some sort of warped logic that everything we touch has been touched by someone else so why bother? My wife and I wipe all hard surface stuff we receive (including mail) with diluted bleach on a cloth then wash our hands, we also gel our hands whenever we go into a store etc. and when we leave, because we want to do all we can not to get or spread the virus. That's the responsible thing to do, what isn't responsible is to challenge and counter the scientifically led recommendations. The rules are there for a reason.











Surfaces Are ‘Not the Main Way’ Coronavirus Spreads, C.D.C. Says (Published 2020)


If you’re worried about wiping down grocery bags or disinfecting mailed packages, this C.D.C. guidance might bring some relief. It’s not new information; the agency has been saying this for months.




www.nytimes.com





So, I did wash my mail for about two weeks - but I have to be honest, I really don't recall for sure. My wife probably had me wash groceries a couple of times. I have a spray bottle with lysol in it - I could show you the bottle and you'd see how little was sprayed from it. 

I said to her at the outset, you have to get virus on your fingers and stick it in your eyes or nose at an appreciable viral load in order to transmit the virus, I don't believe it. I'm watching the mailmen and the staffers at sams and we're going to see what's up. If the sams staffers are touching your boxes all day and people are in the store coughing on them and touching them and they don't get sick - I think the handwashing stuff is just busy busy, and the 6 foot rule indoors is bunk - it's going to get people in smaller spaces killed. 

The wife wasn't entertained. By april, I wasn't washing anything - no mailmen here got sick, and nobody at sams or really any store seemed to get the virus at an accelerated rate. The parcel delivery folks also didn't. They were canaries for us. 

The hand washing thing was and is just a way to keep people busy and mentally engaged - I'm interested in the outcome. Not getting sick, not in busy work. 

Note that in Nov. last year, the CDC started saying publicly that touch transmission was very unlikely. At one point, one of the officials said they didn't have a confirmed case of it. Now, I'd bet someone somewhere got sick touching things, but would also bet that it's a tiny fraction of 1%. Maybe a fraction of that fraction. 

My motivation was probably the same as yours - early on, they said that asthma was a risk factor. I have asthma that is nonexistent most of the time, but it's excited by coughing. A cold turns to bronchitis, what would covid do? From the outset, telling people early on that no mask was needed and that they should wash their hands was two wrong answers. The latter is fine, it's harmless. Prioritizing it over controlling what you breathe is deadly. 

The CDC had decided within months that touch transmission was unlikely, but they didn't publicly say much. That's too bad. Once they and others did, they tried to cover their tracks by claiming that hand washing was to prevent other types of sickness so that you wouldn't be a burden on the health systems (which at the same time here, were foundering because they had no patients - even while the ICUs did become more occupied later, the arm of the health care system that would address cold and flu ,etc, was laying off workers).


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## Jameshow (3 Mar 2021)

I wash hands whenever I get home, also gel hands when I get back into the car from a shop etc. 

Cheers James


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## D_W (3 Mar 2021)

Jameshow said:


> I wash hands whenever I get home, also gel hands when I get back into the car from a shop etc.
> 
> Cheers James



I still do that, too (minus the gel). But that was good practice before Covid. It's still good practice to avoid the little non-covid goblins that do get passed hand to face more easily. Providing the guidance along with covid as a means to stop covid while having fairly relaxed ideas about what a mask is is odd.


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## John Brown (3 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> I know you guys think we can't do public health in the US, but we can - we just end up doing some of it through public providers, and some private.
> 
> Class 1A here has been opened up not just to the elderly and really fat, but also to the moderately fat (like me). What's that? BMI 30. I just barely skid over the line at 205 and 5'9". I remember the says of getting to 160 pounds and thinking it was impossibly fat and I must get back to 145. Now, I'd like to get back to 160.
> 
> ...


Over here, a BMI of 30 puts one in the obese category, not just moderately fat. I guess it's just another difference like gallons or shoe sizes.


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## D_W (3 Mar 2021)

It's called "obese" here, too. 

25-30 is called overweight, 40+ is severely obese. 

I have been informed by a couple of scottish friends who visit often that there are not obese or overweight people in the UK, though.


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## D_W (3 Mar 2021)

I just worked through the BMI calculator. Interesting. At 5'9", even at 150 lbs, i would be only a couple of points from overweight. at 165, I'd be on the bubble. 

I was at the lower end of both of those until getting married (below both for a large amount of that) - i guess that's a unisex chart. To be at the top end of normal weight range at, say, 155 pounds at 5'9" for a male is dippy. My immersion body fat at 150 pounds was 10. how much lower can you go without wasting off lean mass?


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## John Brown (3 Mar 2021)

That's totally correct. It's actually illegal to have a BMI over 25.
Punishment consists of being stretched on a rack until one's BMI falls below that figure.


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## John Brown (3 Mar 2021)

Sorry, looks like you responded to your own post while I was typing...


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## D_W (3 Mar 2021)

John Brown said:


> Sorry, looks like you responded to your own post while I was typing...



No worries. I respond by pretending to accidentally refer to my scottish friends as English... "all of you English people think you're much better than americans, eh, just because you're skinny and you sound like Shrek?"

Of course, I don't really know how that's received except that it elicits a pause every time!!

My best friend here, or one of three, I'd say, is English. I call him British, which elicits an immediate response. "ENGLISH...I'M ENGLISH....BRITISH COULD MEAN ANYTHING!!! IT'S NOT THE SAME."

He lives in the US by choice. I won't repeat what he says (he's of means, though. It's easy to live here when money isn't an issue).

Fair opportunity to do the same in the States, though - go to the south and refer to all Americans as Yankees. I'd give a tenner to see a recording of the response.

(I like your stretcher solution - instant results. Many promise instant results re: weight, but the stretcher would deliver).


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## D_W (20 Mar 2021)

Shot 2 yesterday here in the US (we still do the 3 week interval with pfizer, even though we know that you're pretty much 92-93% protected 2 weeks after the first shot). 

same place, same routine, and strangely, in a room with 100 desks or so giving the shots with shotees assigned a desk at random when one became available - literally same desk. 

Total time involved - less than 10 minutes (plus a 15 minute wait on the end to confirm on reaction, and then out). 

I still see some faff on youtube from time to time in recommended videos about the US doing poorly administering vaccines - just goofy. 2 million shots a day now in the US, and all of the drummed up rubbish about "Trump supporters" who wouldn't get vaccinated.... it didn't materialize. That was predictable.


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## RobinBHM (20 Mar 2021)

TominDales said:


> Sorry to hear this, Canada is often a poster child or doing things well. I'm involved in the vaccine R&D programme, and my guess is that global production will ramp quite quickly and you will be flooded with material earlier than that. Most large economies including UK US, EU, and Canada, had to place early bets on a number of candidates as they could not tell which would work. India is a powerhouse of vaccine manufacture and the command economies also have production. The result is the west will have 4x more than it needs and will start to give it away. The giant factories in India will start to come on stream. Canada has a lot of good will due to its good general diplomacy, so will likely find a channel before long.
> On the public vs private debate, Vaccine work is a good example where public private partnerships work well. Vaccine development is very high risk, the money is made on the childhood staples, epidemic vaccines are usually big loss makers and done for good will - Ebola, Sars etc as they need to be prepared in advance and no-one buys without a pandemic, which only happens once is a generation. Note that the Pfizer jab was developed by a German small co. Moderna, AZ was a publicly funded venture by Oxford and UK government with industry muscle in manufacturing. There are lessons to be learned by the West, where complacency over Sars and Swine flue left us short. In my company case we had a Pandemic scale up centre bid to government turned down 3 years ago despite £50m of industry co-funding, it just didn't seem a priority back then and without the long term public money, industry just cant sustain something that is only used in an emergency. Industry is great as scaling up manufacturing and relativity quickly - after a development lead time - in 6 months, PPE, ventilators, vaccine production has gone from tick over to global scale. The public investment is about having the starting infrastructure available to shorten the lead times, this is something that can be done through co-operation between public and private entities and amongst neighboring states, its an insurance policy. Lots of lessons to learn. We will probably overreact to the pandemic and we will end up with a surplus of laboratories sitting around waiting for the next epidemic.....



very interesting -a vaccine perspective from somebody on the inside.

I know EU is very concerned at the moment, especially as there is a 3rd wave coming over there (Ironically the UK variant). My understanding though is that Europe has at least 3 vaccine manufacturers currently setting up to produce in France: CDMO Recipharm -in Monts, Delpharm - Saint Remy, Fareva.

So despite the EU being behind now, it seems likely they will get plenty of vaccine availability fairly soon.



In regards to the public / private development of vaccines -It seems like the rapid turn around of the covid vaccine was enable by wealthy governments throwing money at pharmaceutical companies to set up and manufacture concurrently with the testing phase -and so the private companies had no risk if it failed, which is the usual difficulty of vaccine and drug development.


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## Amateur (20 Mar 2021)

clogs said:


> ....just to add,
> my daughter is a Paramedic trainee....in a v/large health service just outside London...
> front line staff I would have thought........she's in the thick of it......
> I asked when she would get her jab......she just laughed.......not enough to go around......
> ...


You sure about that?
Doesnt sound right to me when they have been putting calls out to anyone that hasn't had it.
Plus all she needs to do it what you say is correct is to go online and book one.
So why hasnt she done that?


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## Amateur (20 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> We've done worse here than USA in terms of deaths per million, if that's any consolation!
> USA 1,582 UK 1,803
> Don't know if Trump deserves any credit, but Johnson certainly can be blamed for our pathetic scenario.


Look at the Geographics of America and the UK. Wide open spaces and from what I gather each state taking responsibility. Here we are all packed in like sardines.
Boris got off to a bad start I agree but thats in the past he has made up for it.
As for deaths we have a very old aged unfit population which fits into those numbers whereas younger age populations coped much better.
Besides this is a non political forum so why he was commented on in the fir.st place is beyond me?


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## TominDales (20 Mar 2021)

Reply to D_W - Shot 2 today.
Great to hear. We have just had our first shot this week. Did you get any cold like side effects? In the UK, we are noticing some very strong flue like reaction in some people to the first AZ vaccine and to a lesser extent the second Pfizer. The first Pfizer and second AZ seem to have little side effects.

Most of the world is sticking to the 3 weeks interval, as that was what the companies trialed in the early stages, they did it to speed up the trails and get rapid approval in a crisis - a very laudable thing to do. The UK is an outlier on this, they have relied on the prevailing scientific consensus, based on vaccine data of the past 50 years, that in most cases, immunity builds up over several months (up to a year) and a booster is most effective in the 3 to 6 month time period for viruses with a short memory effect and 1 year interval for stable ones like measles, so 3 months seems an optimum for this virus.

The UK vaccine strategy at this early stage in the pandemic, is to reduce deaths and serous medical complications in the short term, so aiming at high coverage and not so worried about high % effectiveness of the first dose . There has been little data to substantiate this scientific hunch until now. This is a very pragmatic approach and works in the UK where there is high confidence in the NHS and anti-vax not a big issue.

In other parts of the world governments are sticking to the company recommendations on 3 weeks. as politician and regulators are weary of the anti vaxers so taking a more cautious approach. In the US the FDA has more rigid rules than most countries as well as anti-vaxer concerns. The FDA rigidity is partly a historical legacy from the original FDA success in avoiding Thalidomide. In that case, as single minded lady official (Francis Kelsey) obstinacy against health professional pressure and industry pressure proved right, it was a world changing victory for the FDA, and that has been a principle ever since, but has tended to make the FDA a bit rigid in its approach compared to EU and other compatible regulators.
This is still a fast changing picture with new evidence emerging so we will have to keep adapting to new information. I'd be interested in your experience. My wife and I both suffered for a couple of days with AZ 2st dose this week, My wife was physically sick and had high temperature for 2 days and very poorly ached all over, but we would do it again. See what happens in 3 months time.


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## TominDales (20 Mar 2021)

RobinBHM said:


> very interesting -a vaccine perspective from somebody on the inside.
> 
> I know EU is very concerned at the moment, especially as there is a 3rd wave coming over there (Ironically the UK variant). My understanding though is that Europe has at least 3 vaccine manufacturers currently setting up to produce in France: CDMO Recipharm -in Monts, Delpharm - Saint Remy, Fareva.
> 
> So despite the EU being behind now, it seems likely they will get plenty of vaccine availability fairly soon.


In my view the EU is making a number of mistakes on vaccines. As you say it's only a matter of time before they will have enough. But what they do have in stock from AZ is being held up by ill considered policy changes. Having managed the early stages of lockdown really quite well, they are in my view being a bit reckless and in this respect the UK has been exemplary. The key thing is to keep confidence in the vaccines high, otherwise you can get poor uptake which is self defeating. 
There are a few paradoxes:
The EU has huge vaccine production capacity, it is a net exporter of vaccines, the UK has very little and has relied on EU production even for UK designed vaccines by companies like GSK, manufacture and distribute their vaccines from Belgium - this has been a major Brexit headache for AZ and GSK as finishing lines have had to be moved over the boarder to get EU approval etc. It seems this massive capacity has lead to complacency in the EU. The UK on the other hand had very little home production and has spent a huge some of money (£13bn) on advanced contracts and building some quite modest local production as a preoccupation. The UK is now worried the EU may interrupt these commercial contacts with Pfizer etc, like the US is doing with its war-powers acts etc. The German government is concerned because once the EU overrides commercial contracts, importers like the UK and developing countries will lose confidence in the EU post pandemic and insist on domestic supply - just like they did when the US flexed is muscles a few years ago. That will damage the EU business model for decades to come.
The EU's vaccilation on approving the AZ vaccine is very worrying, and one suspects a bit of nationalism as well as caution with anti vaxers, as Sanophi and the German majors didn't get their vaccines through in time. And bizarrely there was delay in Brussels on the Pfizer Biontech contact because some EU states suspected Germany favour its Biotech business.
Having had a relatively good first wave and dodging the British variant in wave 2 - which probably added 50k deaths to our tally - they are at risk on letting a 3rd wave happen and even allowing new variants to emerge.


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## Spectric (20 Mar 2021)

The issue that makes it worse is that we are a little island, think of it as a castle with a moat around it, so we had the means to prevent this virus getting amongst the population by locking down the few to protect the majority. Just like the kings of old, the enemy approaches so you pull up the drawbridge. If all ports and airports had been closed until quarantine centres had been established and then EVERYONE coming into the uk was quarantined for two weeks before actually entering then we would be in a much better position than we are now. What this country needs is an emergency response team that are not political and with the power to use any means to prevent another pandemic even if it means upsetting people and their human rights, and we need to think about ID cards of some sort, it would be a good starting point for any future track and trace systems and could also be a vacination record to allow travel. The issue is we have three fronts that all need to be addressed, the vacine is helping deal with one of them, the current virus but we cannot ever just ignore it because it is with us for at least the foreseeable future and then what is coming next, it is not a case of it finding us but as we encroach into unknown places we will find it.


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## D_W (20 Mar 2021)

Amateur said:


> Look at the Geographics of America and the UK. Wide open spaces and from what I gather each state taking responsibility. Here we are all packed in like sardines.
> Boris got off to a bad start I agree but thats in the past he has made up for it.
> As for deaths we have a very old aged unfit population which fits into those numbers whereas younger age populations coped much better.
> Besides this is a non political forum so why he was commented on in the fir.st place is beyond me?



we probably have more rural population, but more than half of our population is hugely social and densely packed in urban and suburban. The hardford, NY, NJ corridor probably has 25 million of population and is a magnet for tourists - thus, the early results were predictable (plus, their mayor in NYC was slow to shut things down). 

I don't think the EU is getting as much criticism as they deserve given how much rubbish we hear in the US about how far behind our public health initiatives are (those kinds of comments tend to ignore the fact that we have enormous social medicine systems that are funded publicly and only provided mostly privately at the point of service). 

That's compounded by the fact that the typical means in the US is high enough that there's not a lot of elderly care in home (Which means the nursing homes are just packed with vulnerable in arrangements that are similar to hotels -in many cases here, the nursing homes are converted hotels since the setup is ideal for room by room access and double occupancy). 

There was profit incentive to get vaccines made and distributed here, and as you mention, much state pressure on politicians to create additional pressure at the federal level from governors, and the governors are under pressure from the county and city locations. 

The holier than thou start from the EU and other parts of the world and discussion of how fast and how much they'd vaccinate is schadenfreude (which is a bit unhealthy to partake in). Despite our news sources here, we had a million shots a day before trump ever left office. The news is an interesting thing - it's so politically biased (keeping in mind, I am registered independent and behave accordingly) that the news aggregation services here are showing me a clip of biden tripping three times in a row on steps (which is a bit concerning)..... 

.....but every single news outlet providing that is from the UK. I expect if I go look now, some of the US outlets may have a story about it out of embarrassment of being accused of not reporting it due to political bias. 

And that's with the background also that I think the biden presidency is going quite well. It's the bias in the news that I'm not a fan of.


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## D_W (20 Mar 2021)

as I'd guessed - the fall was reported yesterday by only one larger news outlet - the NY post (which is sort of a minority alternative to the times and generally pretty conservative for NY). 

Newsweek or some other soft-news outlet decided only late this morning to post a story about it. Google doesn't bring up any mainstream news sources with it - it's fabulously missing from a page filled with much more outdated news from the typical suspects here. I didn't look at forksnews - i'm sure they have something about it, but that's just their sales gimmick and would be expected.


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## TominDales (20 Mar 2021)

Amateur said:


> You sure about that?
> Doesnt sound right to me when they have been putting calls out to anyone that hasn't had it.
> Plus all she needs to do it what you say is correct is to go online and book one.
> So why hasnt she done that?


I doubt she is eligible if she is young. The NHS England roll-out of vaccine is very strictly age/vulnerability based - its purely driven on what saves lives rather than any other values/factors. Its also an easy policy to deploy across a very complicated supply system, and hard for the unscrupulous and sharp elbowed to get round (for instance by creating paramedic companies for themselves and friends and family..)
The committee considered early a vaccination of public facing groups such as paramedics, police, teachers, bus drivers, shop assistants, bar workers, but it was complicated with a lot of groups to consider and rather sketchy data on who was vulnerable, on the whole data shows that age is the overriding risk factor and occupation comes further down the line, taxi drivers are as much or more at risk than some of the emergency services. 
With a few exceptions, such as those working in ICU (not just the medics but cleaners and ancillary staff), and those caring for the old and vulnerable, who pose a risk of infecting their charges So the role out has been strictly age related. If you or your daughter happens to be a young paramedic dealing with the general public she will be asked to wait. If you get transferred into geriatrics or other, strictly limited high risker risk occupations that would change.

The risk with this approach is things could change. A new variant that effects the young could emerge in which case the policy would need to change.


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## Amateur (20 Mar 2021)

TominDales said:


> I doubt she is eligible if she is young. The NHS England roll-out of vaccine is very strictly age/vulnerability based - its purely driven on what saves lives rather than any other values/factors. Its also an easy policy to deploy across a very complicated supply system, and hard for the unscrupulous and sharp elbowed to get round (for instance by creating paramedic companies for themselves and friends and family..)
> The committee considered early a vaccination of public facing groups such as paramedics, police, teachers, bus drivers, shop assistants, bar workers, but it was complicated with a lot of groups to consider and rather sketchy data on who was vulnerable, on the whole data shows that age is the overriding risk factor and occupation comes further down the line, taxi drivers are as much or more at risk than some of the emergency services.
> With a few exceptions, such as those working in ICU (not just the medics but cleaners and ancillary staff), and those caring for the old and vulnerable, who pose a risk of infecting their charges So the role out has been strictly age related. If you or your daughter happens to be a young paramedic dealing with the general public she will be asked to wait. If you get transferred into geriatrics or other, strictly limited high risker risk occupations that would change.
> 
> The risk with this approach is things could change. A new variant that effects the young could emerge in which case the policy would need to change.



Im sorry to disagree.
If she goes on line to book an appointment they ask if she is in a vulnerable position, regardless of age.
Anyone who cares for a relative can Get the vaccination.
all you have to be is in an at risk situation for themselves or anyone they are looking after.


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## gog64 (20 Mar 2021)

clogs said:


> ....just to add,
> my daughter is a Paramedic trainee....in a v/large health service just outside London...
> front line staff I would have thought........she's in the thick of it......
> I asked when she would get her jab......she just laughed.......not enough to go around......
> ...



that’a strange, I was in hospital very early Feb and discussed this with staff. I was told that every single member of medical staff plus all the serco employees who do the cleaning, food, etc.etc had all been offered the jab. I don’t know about paramedics though? Maybe it varies a lot according to area? I had my first jab mid Feb, a few weeks after hospital staff as I’m in the “high risk” cohort. My son (care home worker) was also vaccinated early Feb. Seems like a sensible & orderly roll out to me.


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## Amateur (20 Mar 2021)

SPECTRIC

It's not as simple as just throwing early response teams into action, how were they going to treat an unknown?
The virus has to be identified first which takes time.
What was interesting is that every country in the world virtually followed the same procedures, which indicates that a formulated plan had already been worked out in the eventuality of a global pandemic.
The UK were fortunate that Oxford were already looking at similar strains of the virus and would already be doubled up with other countries labs overseas running similar programs.

It's interesting to look what happens with the yearly flu jab.
Monitoring takes place in participating countries during the year. Groups meet to give their best stab at what new strain will be considered to be the most virulent based upon yearly trends. Then the flu virus is modified in time for the yearly rollout. That happens every year.
In the case of covid there was nothing.
It was a new virus.
No one knew how to treat it, or exactly what it was.
In fact information was so scarce folk turning up unable to breath at hospitals were put on ventilators which as it turned out was the worst thing they could have done. That's how sparse information was.


The Chinese could have imparted information earlier when the first outbreaks occurred which would have allowed labs to start work months earlier. But didn't.
In fact over six months if my memory serves me well.
This is one of the main issues never discussed, and pointing fingers at western leaders for slow starts is maybe the wrong thing to do.

How can any country ban flights, and ban foreign travel when they don't have enough information to tell the airlines to stop flying?
It's only as the potency of the virus started causing the upward death rates, and medical officers began getting information what covid19 actually was and did that decisions could realistically be made.
But it's a hard call to potentially destroy your economy by making the wrong decisions too early.
It wasn't until the rest of the world was in the same boat that countries took action at which point it became obvious that economies would suffer indefinitely.


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## TominDales (20 Mar 2021)

gog64 said:


> that’a strange, I was in hospital very early Feb and discussed this with staff. I was told that every single member of medical staff plus all the serco employees who do the cleaning, food, etc.etc had all been offered the jab. I don’t know about paramedics though? Maybe it varies a lot according to area? I had my first jab mid Feb, a few weeks after hospital staff as I’m in the “high risk” cohort. My son (care home worker) was also vaccinated early Feb. Seems like a sensible & orderly roll out to me.


It depends on the hospital set up. If the hospital unit treats Covid patients then its been rolled out to all staff as the data has shown the non medical staff are just as vulnerable as medical staff and infected staff can then infect vulnerable patients. If the unit or paramedics are dealing with 'non covid' people or normal risk people, they have been put further down the list in most (but not all areas), same with the police etc. As of late February, those Clinically extremely vulnerable and carers of clinically extremely vulnerable people became eligible. And in the past week the list moved down the age list to anyone over 50. see :Who can get the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine however if you are bellow 50, and not caring for the clinically extremely vulnerable you still have to wait even if your profession is public facing such as police, fire, paramedic.


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## Lons (20 Mar 2021)

Amateur said:


> Besides this is a non political forum so why he was commented on in the fir.st place is beyond me?



You shouldn't be surprised if you look at who made the comment and his history of left wing political posts.


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## TominDales (20 Mar 2021)

Amateur said:


> SPECTRIC
> It's interesting to look what happens with the yearly flu jab.
> Monitoring takes place in participating countries during the year. Groups meet to give their best stab at what new strain will be considered to be the most virulent based upon yearly trends. Then the flu virus is modified in time for the yearly rollout. That happens every year.
> In the case of covid there was nothing.


My company is involved with the development and scale-up of new vaccines, and on a positive note, despite the secrecy surrounding future vaccine development, the treasury did release quite a bit of detail ahead of the budget. As can be gleaned from this announcement, there are well developed plans for a library of new variant vaccines to be ready to role out a booster later this year if its needed. : Budget 2021: Extra £1.6bn for UK's Covid vaccination rollout whatever the mistakes first time round, little is being left to chance this time.


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## gog64 (20 Mar 2021)

TominDales said:


> It depends on the hospital set up. If the hospital unit treats Covid patients then its been rolled out to all staff as the data has shown the non medical staff are just as vulnerable as medical staff and infected staff can then infect vulnerable patients. If the unit or paramedics are dealing with 'non covid' people or normal risk people, they have been put further down the list in most (but not all areas), same with the police etc. As of late February, those Clinically extremely vulnerable and carers of clinically extremely vulnerable people became eligible. And in the past week the list moved down the age list to anyone over 50. see :Who can get the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine however if you are bellow 50, and not caring for the clinically extremely vulnerable you still have to wait even if your profession is public facing such as police, fire, paramedic.



That’s a good explanation, thank you. You should work for the government! I find their explanations (or lack of) poor. I stick to my guns on timeline though, I checked my vaccine card and I was vaccinated a month ago. I’m definitely “high risk” not “extremely vulnerable”. My son’s workplace is a residential facility for adults with complex needs. It’s a large national charity and they started vaccinations the first week in February. My son was actually the last member of staff to get vaccinated and that was 2nd week in February.


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## TominDales (20 Mar 2021)

gog64 said:


> That’s a good explanation, thank you. You should work for the government! I find their explanations (or lack of) poor. I stick to my guns on timeline though, I checked my vaccine card and I was vaccinated a month ago. I’m definitely “high risk” not “extremely vulnerable”. My son’s workplace is a residential facility for adults with complex needs. It’s a large national charity and they started vaccinations the first week in February. My son was actually the last member of staff to get vaccinated and that was 2nd week in February.


Actually the NHSs definition is also confusing its :
*People at high risk from coronavirus (clinically extremely vulnerable),*
So you probably qualify, the NHS has a list of clinically extremely vulnerable people, but I don't think it has a proper definition of those 'at high risk from coronavirus.
Also I've gone back and checked some facts, I was ina-ccurate answer to your question on paramedics. The 8th January announcement of NHS organisations roll our of the vaccine to staff DOES include Paramedics that are employed by the NHS - my mistake, I think the complication is its paramedics employed by the NHS organisations, but Paramedic fire fighters and others don't quality. As you said, its not simple. However the good news is, that despite the impeding slow down next month, the UK will have vaccinated all the high risk groups and over 50s by about Easter. Once they get to the 40+ group the risks should be on a manageable level.


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## TominDales (20 Mar 2021)

Amateur said:


> Im sorry to disagree.
> If she goes on line to book an appointment they ask if she is in a vulnerable position, regardless of age.
> Anyone who cares for a relative can Get the vaccination.
> all you have to be is in an at risk situation for themselves or anyone they are looking after.


Hi I've gone and checked, and you are right, its as always rather confusing. The 8th January announcement does include Paramedics if they are employed by the NHS NHS England » NHS organisations instructed to rapidly vaccinate staff So for clogs either your daughter is not employed by the NHS or that organisation has been very slow rolling out the vaccine to its staff. Worth noting, NHS staff are vaccinated via a completely separate route to the rest of us. (again this is complicated but designed to stop cheating/fraud).


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## Spectric (20 Mar 2021)

Amateur said:


> The virus has to be identified first which takes time.


That is not how safety works, all you need to know is that there is a potential serious hazzard coming your way, so react and stop the hazzard, then you are in control and can identify it is a virus and take the upper hand rather than letting it through and then having to chase it.

It is like someone pointing a gun in your direction, you don't wait to find out if it is real, fake or who manufactured it you just respond and keep your head down.


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## MikeJhn (21 Mar 2021)

Anyone else here read the Times? Not usually known for hysterical exaggeration in its reporting, which is why I like it - which makes today’s reading all the more depressing for those of us desperate to get to away as I fear it’s probably quite accurate. 

I can’t link due to the paywall but this is the gist of it:
Three separate articles on the third wave of Covid sweeping Europe, France’s infection rate spiralling out of control, the mass exodus out of Paris to avoid the newly imposed lockdown (thus inevitably spreading it to more rural areas,) the catastrophic consequences of Macron’s comments over Oxford Astra Zeneca and ongoing lack of confidence in it across the EU but particularly in France, the bungling incompetence of the vaccine rollout (or lack of) across the EU and the internal schisms appearing as countries argue amongst themselves about whose fault it is.

And now another schism over the threatened banning of vaccine exports out of the EU. Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland and Sweden have allied against Ursula VDL’s proposals backed by Germany, France and Italy.


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## Amateur (21 Mar 2021)

Spectric said:


> That is not how safety works, all you need to know is that there is a potential serious hazzard coming your way, so react and stop the hazzard, then you are in control and can identify it is a virus and take the upper hand rather than letting it through and then having to chase it.
> 
> It is like someone pointing a gun in your direction, you don't wait to find out if it is real, fake or who manufactured it you just respond and keep your head down.



you can't respond to a virus without first understanding what it is and what the threat is.


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## Trainee neophyte (21 Mar 2021)

MikeJhn said:


> And now another schism over the threatened banning of vaccine exports out of the EU. Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland and Sweden have allied against Ursula VDL’s proposals backed by Germany, France and Italy.


Unfortunately it is hard to separate politics from public health with all of this. The Russian vaccine is both effective _and_ available, and offered for manufacture inside the EU, but obviously the better choice is not vaccinating all of Europe because of the optics. Tie that in with Nordstream (which is hugely more important geopolitically for Germany and USA, and Russia for that matter, than all this covid nonsense) and you can construct some quite elegant theories around purposely failing to have a vaccination rollout so as to turn to Russia as a final hail - Mary fait acomplis. 

However, "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" is almost certainly the way forward here. Just incompetent bureaucrats empire building with no comprehension of or consideration for the consequences. Fairly standard for the EU.


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## Amateur (21 Mar 2021)

mikej460 said:


> So, I read posts quoting statistics as flawed, also different countries using different metrics, some countries with low outbreaks vs. low transient population yada yada. This isn't a p*ssing contest guys. Things are getting much better, but complacency is now the enemy; people who have had their jab(s) are feeling they can go back to normal and people who haven't (under 60s in the UK) see this and just copy their behaviour. Now we hear of people travelling from red list countries with new variants attempting to enter the UK without quarantining. It is still a dangerous world.



You raise a very interesting point that people just don't seem to understand.
The full extent of antibodies after the injection takes some time to build up in the body, then they start to reduce.
Testing of first and second jab candidates to establish how long antibodies give you this protection is still being monitored, but it is hoped that after the second jab it should be enough to give people six months protection.
However, you can still catch covid 19 but it shouldn't be as severe as not being vaccinated at all, and should prevent deaths in the majority of cases.
The industry is now working on a single covid injection to be taken along with the flu injection once a year. As things progress this will probably be incorporated with the flu vaccine as a single injection sometime in the future.
Unlocking the population too early with not a high enough percentage vaccinated could cause rising infection rates.
And with a known six months protection everything that's been worked for could be lost.
All this could change as time goes on and more knowledge about the virus is learned.


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## Lefley (21 Mar 2021)

Amateur said:


> You raise a very interesting point that people just don't seem to understand.
> The full extent of antibodies after the injection takes some time to build up in the body, then they start to reduce.
> Testing of first and second jab candidates to establish how long antibodies give you this protection is still being monitored, but it is hoped that after the second jab it should be enough to give people six months protection.
> However, you can still catch covid 19 but it shouldn't be as severe as not being vaccinated at all, and should prevent deaths in the majority of cases.
> ...


Unlocking the public early also causes the virus to mutate. Which in turn can cause everyone that has had the original vaccine to be not effective to the new strain! Right back to square one only worse! Now every country is broke!


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## TominDales (21 Mar 2021)

Lefley said:


> Unlocking the public early also causes the virus to mutate. Which in turn can cause everyone that has had the original vaccine to be not effective to the new strain! Right back to square one only worse! Now every country is broke!


Although that is a possibility, its unlikely to be that extreme. A number of factors are on our side compared with 12 months ago.

- Most significantly we know that vaccines work on coronaviruses, this was an unknown 12 months ago, past attempts to develop vaccines for rhinoviruses and coronaviruses were not effective. This time, more modern design and modeling capability of the receptor sites, and the relative stability of Covid has let to vaccines that are really very effective. 12 months ago the UK government bet £13bn on vaccine development and procurement, not knowing that any of it would work. This time round we know that investment in vaccine R&D and production is a low risk investment, so money will flow, both private and public.

-Vaccine production is ramping up globally, very quickly, vaccines are hard to manufacture, a lot of advanced know-how is needed. As processes get perfected production will become enormous, so will the supply chain from factory gate to patients arm. (its partly relates to the risk factor mentioned in the past point), most companies are only just getting the manufacturing recipes right.

- Provided the manufacturing process for new variants of Covid closely follow the early vaccines, ( this will happen, but there is still a bit of process development needed) there will be less need (or no need) for the early stage clinical trials, as the product will be substantially unaltered, so clinical trials can skip to the later phases, vastly shortening the cycle. As with the flu type cycle, which means we can have a steady feed of new-variant vaccines at production scale. Flu has two sixth monthly cycles each year, its starts with a booster for the northern hemisphere then an update is prepared for the southern hemisphere to teat emerging strains and then updated again for the north. There is no reason why Covid boosters should not follow this pattern or even more frequent updates.
Technology is in development for enable biological medicines to be made on demand at the patients bedside, this is only a few years away from reality. If there was a need, this type of engineering could be fast tracked for rapid virus development , a few years away admittedly, but not a pipe dream.

- medical treatment has improved, we have learned what works, many drugs have become available that reduces the worst side effects of covid thanks to Martin Landray and his team in Oxford, and advanced monoclonal antibody treatments are becoming available for the ultra vulnerable - this will continue to improve

- we have learned how to reduce the spread of infection, lockdowns are extremely effective and will be available should things get out of hand, other measures such as wearing of masks etc are now a matter of habit.

A continuing problem is the virus will keep finding pools of unprotected people as it spreads around the globe, at the moment daily infections rates are down from the peak of 800,000 recorded in December to nearer 500,000 (but rising again). Until vaccines become universal this will be a worry. However data is emerging that some developing countries in Africa and South Asia that still rely on contagious disease control similar to what we had in the 1950 when we had isolation hospitals, TB hospitals, and even school sanitariums, where infectious diseases were confined and treated in separate hospitals. This infrastructure has been postulated as to why infection spread in some developing countries (with good data recording) has been low. ( ignoring countries that lie about the true state of infection such as N Korea, Tanzania, Russia etc). Some in the UK are suggesting we go back to this structure if Covid hangs on.

So whilst there is a lot to worry about, and complacency would be disastrous (as it was last year), there are genuine reasons for optimism and assuming a worst case scenario is unlikely. It does not mean we wont be fighting virus flare-up for years to come, but we should learn to live with it and get on with re-building our economies .


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## selectortone (21 Mar 2021)

MikeJhn said:


> Anyone else here read the Times? Not usually known for hysterical exaggeration in its reporting, which is why I like it - which makes today’s reading all the more depressing for those of us desperate to get to away as I fear it’s probably quite accurate.
> 
> I can’t link due to the paywall but this is the gist of it:
> Three separate articles on the third wave of Covid sweeping Europe, France’s infection rate spiralling out of control, the mass exodus out of Paris to avoid the newly imposed lockdown (thus inevitably spreading it to more rural areas,) the catastrophic consequences of Macron’s comments over Oxford Astra Zeneca and ongoing lack of confidence in it across the EU but particularly in France, the bungling incompetence of the vaccine rollout (or lack of) across the EU and the internal schisms appearing as countries argue amongst themselves about whose fault it is.
> ...


Why on earth would anyone want to holiday in the EU? It sounds like it's total chaos over there, and I speak as a vehement anti-Brexiter. The various government heads, Macron in particular, (who needs a good kick up the arris), have shown themselves up to be total incompetents. There's no way on earth I'll be going abroad in the foreseeable future. Plenty of nice places to visit here.


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## Lefley (21 Mar 2021)

selectortone said:


> Why on earth would anyone want to holiday in the EU? It sounds like it's toal chaos over there, and I speak as a vehement anti-Brexiter. The various government heads, Macron in particular, (who needs a good kick up the arris), have shown themselves up to be total incompetents. There's no way on earth I'll be going abroad in the foreseeable future. Plenty of nice places to visit here.


You can’t even find a campsite around here. Everyone holidaying locally or at least in the country. Can’t find garden seeds. People going back to the old days. Doing local things, and growing, gardens.

as a builder it’s had to be one of the busiest years ever. Every body had to stay home, so they started looking st there own houses and the Reno’s started to happen. We also live in the mountains. There was a mass exodus of people realizing they could work from home and they have been leaving the city and buying there retirement homes in the country years early and working from there. The city business rentals are all empty. Businesses realizing they can run offices without having everyone come into work.


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## MikeJhn (22 Mar 2021)

selectortone said:


> Why on earth would anyone want to holiday in the EU? It sounds like it's total chaos over there, and I speak as a vehement anti-Brexiter. The various government heads, Macron in particular, (who needs a good kick up the arris), have shown themselves up to be total incompetents. There's no way on earth I'll be going abroad in the foreseeable future. Plenty of nice places to visit here.


The problem for some 650,000 Brits are they bought holiday homes in France as I did prior to ever thinking we would leave the EU and no thought of a pandemic every happening, have not been there in over a year, but need to get there to finish some renovation work so we can sell, we also not have the Schengen agreement to contend with, witch puts paid to long stays in the Sun.


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## Amateur (22 Mar 2021)

I just wonder if the EU stockpile of vaccine hasn't been used because they can't make up their minds which country to send it to?
Whichever country they choose would be seen as being biased against the rest?
I can see the squabbling now.


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## D_W (22 Mar 2021)

They suffer from the same thing as NASA does now. There's no penalty for doing nothing and pretending to be careful but attempting to do something innovative that results in a mistake or inequity can get you fired. Look at the whole blood clot thing. How many people have blood clots at a background level and how many die of covid. What's the sensible move, to stop vaccinating? I don't think so. What's the death rate in the vulnerable population from covid more than two weeks after the first shot?


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## D_W (22 Mar 2021)

The whole system preserves the place and paycheck for chickens and punishes reasonable risk. That's the difference between 1965 NASA and now, and why subcontractors need to do their work for them.


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## Amateur (22 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> The whole system preserves the place and paycheck for chickens and punishes reasonable risk. That's the difference between 1965 NASA and now, and why subcontractors need to do their work for them.



It's called litigation


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## Chris152 (23 Mar 2021)

MikeJhn said:


> The problem for some 650,000 Brits are they bought holiday homes in France as I did prior to ever thinking we would leave the EU and no thought of a pandemic every happening, have not been there in over a year, but need to get there to finish some renovation work so we can sell, we also not have the Schengen agreement to contend with, witch puts paid to long stays in the Sun.


Mike - apparently you're going to be allowed to travel for precisely the reason you describe:
'People will be allowed to leave the UK to prepare a second home for sale or rent, according to new coronavirus regulations coming into force later this month.'








Covid travel rules will include 'Stanley Johnson loophole' for second homes


Updated regulations will allow people to leave UK to prepare second homes for sale or rent




www.theguardian.com




The article's critical of allowing it, presumably because people can use it as an excuse to go on hols (I've not read the whole article), but it should help in your situation?


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## D_W (23 Mar 2021)

Amateur said:


> It's called litigation



Generally, governments and their entities are legally immune from it. I think it's more like self preservation in those worlds. When is the last time you saw a major health official or NASA official get sued over an aggressive good faith effort? 

Interestingly, the private companies that are more likely to get sued are much more aggressive about getting things done.


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## MikeJhn (23 Mar 2021)

Chris152 said:


> Mike - apparently you're going to be allowed to travel for precisely the reason you describe:
> 'People will be allowed to leave the UK to prepare a second home for sale or rent, according to new coronavirus regulations coming into force later this month.'
> 
> 
> ...


All true except the French do not allow that for a reason to travel to France in fact their latest Government documentation specifically states: 

The requirement for pressing grounds does not apply if you are travelling from one of the following countries:
*Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, United Kingdom.*
Your trip must however meet one of the exception criteria as listed on the exempted travel certificate and you will be subject to the health control measures below (RT-PCR tests, sworn statement and self-isolation).

So not allowed into France if you are traveling from the UK.


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## MikeJhn (25 Mar 2021)

MikeJhn said:


> All true except the French do not allow that for a reason to travel to France in fact their latest Government documentation specifically states:
> 
> The requirement for pressing grounds does not apply if you are travelling from one of the following countries:
> *Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, United Kingdom.*
> ...


Things change quick around here now days, you now are allowed into France its just the expensive hotel quarantine needed in the UK when you return, oh and the requirement for an expensive PCR test on the way out within 72hrs of arriving in France, isn't this fun, think I will stay home.


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## Terry - Somerset (25 Mar 2021)

Travel rules change almost daily on a country by country basis and planning an overseas holiday is simply not possible.

On a purely personal level I would like the freedom to choose whether I go to France, Italy, Spain etc for a break. Would I go in the next few weeks - probably not. Their problems with a 3rd wave of Covid will make any holiday very compromised probably with internal travel restrictions, hospitaity closures and other constraints.

But I am not convinced by the risks of foreign travel rhetoric:

a pragmatic, but not necessarily moral, concern is for the UK first, places that I may visit or relate to second, and the rest of the world a long way third.
if the vaccine reduces serious virus impacts by 90%+, why is there concern about visitors or returning UK tourists being infected - their infection will either not spread or cause little damage.
if a visitor has a mutated virus and the vaccine is ineffective against that mutation and the mutation causes serious disease and death there is a real risk. 
as has been demonstrated by other mutations, if the most effective controls will not ultimately stop global transmission
The argument that the world needs to defeat Covid before we are all safe may be intellectually attractive, but would require the virus to be at very low levels worldwide, with mechanisms in place to monitor and react to any new outbreak. 

This would consign the UK (and most of the developed world) to 2/3/4 years more restrictions and constraints. This is economically implausible. We need to accept that there are risks and manage them - we can't eliminate them entirely.


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