Israel new cases 30 days. Doesn't seem that encouraging at the moment.
Let's see how that feeds into the hospitalisation rate, we know a single dose may not be enough to prevent people from getting it, but should be enough to prevent severe symptoms that require hospitalisation.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Where's its manufactured doesn't really matter though. It's no good if it's made in the UK if a critical filter or sensor is being imported from Germany, for example, and without which manufacture is not possible.
I do admit that home manufacture, even with a foreign supply chain, gives us more control over the finished product. It doesn't however prevent "the enemy" from cutting off supply.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Yes, the vaccine nationalism is far more concerning. The EU has buggered up its procurement process.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
Israel new cases 30 days. Doesn't seem that encouraging at the moment.
Let's see how that feeds into the hospitalisation rate, we know a single dose may not be enough to prevent people from getting it, but should be enough to prevent severe symptoms that require hospitalisation.
I also wonder whether we will see that sort of spike in new infections once vaccination programmes reach a reasonable proportion of the population, as people start to relax. Or maybe it will only happen in countries like Israel where their rollout is fast, so a good proportion have been jabbed but have yet to develop full protective effect.
Israel new cases 30 days. Doesn't seem that encouraging at the moment.
Let's see how that feeds into the hospitalisation rate, we know a single dose may not be enough to prevent people from getting it, but should be enough to prevent severe symptoms that require hospitalisation.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
So you mean people who agree with you and your assumptions. Lets see your "core data" considering the Cummings "scandal" came while lockdown was being lifted and many months before the second wave began.
Don't be ridiculous claiming that cost lives while antivax BS doesn't. Show some "core data" to substantiate that. 🙄
It's the comparison I'm interested in. They both will have cost lives. This is undeniable to all with integrity. Definition of integrity here being people who seek to neither downplay and excuse Cummings nor downplay and excuse this. So, I can play (although I'm not) but you and ilk can't.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
I know newspapers are used to dealing with lawyers and disputes, but do they really want all that Legal Big Pharma has to throw at them, from a $130bn company?
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
The sensible thing is to wait until the EMA delivers its expected authorisation and conditions for the Astrazeneca vaccine on Friday. They are not going to make mistakes like this. The problem is the widespread repetition as fact of unsubstantiated and unattributed assertion. Not just a German problem, I have to say...
There is speculation that the EMA will not authorise the AZ vaccine for over 65s. If this happens, I suspect a risk of people coming to the conclusion that the vaccine is unsafe, rather than that the EMA lacks the data to support authorisation, hopefully a temporary situation until the data can be procured.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
The sensible thing is to wait until the EMA delivers its expected authorisation and conditions on Friday. They are not going to make mistakes like this. The problem is the widespread repetition as fact of unsubstantiated and unattributed assertion. Not just a German problem, I have to say...
There is speculation that the EMA will not authorise the AZ vaccine for over 65s. If this happens, I suspect a risk of people coming to the conclusion that the vaccine is unsafe, rather than that the EMA lacks the data to support authorisation, hopefully a temporary situation until the data can be procured.
By that time all our over 65s will already be vaccinated!
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
The EU live rent free in @MarqueeMark 's head so everything is about them, unfortunately.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
Blimey - I had not heard that.
I should be clear. Their claim is that EU-destined vaccines have been sent to the UK, which they want stopped.
Yes, you don't ship 3.2 million bodies across the Atlantic without some serious professionals watching your back. Credit where credit is due.
Who did more to save Africans/Americans from slavery - Hariet Tubman or the Royal Navy?
Are you mad? First, it isn't a competition. If H Tubman saved some Americans from slavery why shouldn't other Americans celebrate the fact by putting her on their banknotes, because somebody else allegedly saved more? Secondly do you dispute the 3.2m figure, and what do you think that figure might have been reduced to in the absence of RN domination of the seas over the relevant period? That seems to me to give the RN a net deficit of about 3m, counting just first generation slaves. What are you setting against that?
Surely you think this is all a load of nonsense because it's no worse than a bad cold and we should all get back to normal?
Tell you what. I will admit covid is a serious issue.
But then you have to admit that lockdowns have devastating consequences. On children. On young people. On people in poverty. On jobs and the economy. on mental health. On the fabric of society. On human rights. Its eminently clear today.
I at least have tried to have a debate about whether lockdowns are worth it and whether the extent to which the young are being sacrificed is worth it.
All you and others like you have tried to do is shut down debate.
It's a non-debate in terms of the big picture. Every single thing you mention would have been worse with no lockdown. There is no "cost of lockdown" because it was not an either/or choice. Or the cost is negative if you like. It's large and negative.
The valid debate has been - still is - around the details of the restrictions. The timing. The scope. Border control. The balance between trust and law. The extent to which it should be policed. All of this.
You have shown not the slightest interest in having a debate like that. All you've done on this whole topic since the virus emerged is spread lies and write fatuously pretentious faux "man of the world" drivel.
More correctly, the debate should not be about lockdown or not, but about what level of non-medical interventions (social distancing, hand and respiratory hygiene, PPE) is required to minimize the net impact of the outbreak. And that has to include consideration of all the issues Contrarian lists.
It so happens, lockdowns seem to be about the most socially doable mechanism. It need not have been the only option, or even the best one. For example, we could all have agreed to wear full PPE (full Tyvek body suit, booties, gloves, hood, N95, goggles, face shield - assuming no shortages), and gone about our normal business (except eating and drinking in public) and learnt how to don and doff our PPE correctly and decontaminate at the appropriate points in our activities.
There may well have been a better optimal mix of policies. Unfortunately, we'll never know, because this is not an experiment that can be re-run. And no, the UK's experience cannot really be directly compared with that of other nations because a pandemic is a complex adaptive system, a type of system which is extremely sensitive to initial states and inputs - i.e. where outcomes vary massively based on changes of initial state and input below the level at which measurements can be made. I think that drawing any inference from international comparisons is fraught, other than 1. timing is important, and 2. level of compliance with government guidelines/rules is much, much more important for effectiveness than the actual guidelines/rules themselves.
(1) for sure. As for (2) imo the messaging is more important than the precise legal rules since (least here) it's not aggressively policed. It's about getting the public to do the right thing. Which in turn means communicating a proper understanding of the virus and the risks, plus generating a sense of trust in government.
Not sure you are right on the last point - at least not fully so. Messaging - quality, consistency, and multiple channels with multiple champions - is clearly important. But some societies are just better at trusting and hence implementing governmental orders (whether they are good governments or not) and are better about thinking about others rather than themselves. The US and UK are bad (judged in pandemic response terms - these can be good qualities in other fields, such as scientific research and innovation) on both these cultural parameters.
Agree with that. A collectivist - "there's nothing special about me" - mindset is better is these circumstances. Indeed it is in most circumstances imo but that's another story.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Where's its manufactured doesn't really matter though. It's no good if it's made in the UK if a critical filter or sensor is being imported from Germany, for example, and without which manufacture is not possible.
I do admit that home manufacture, even with a foreign supply chain, gives us more control over the finished product. It doesn't however prevent "the enemy" from cutting off supply.
I think that Macron (PPE) and whoever is currently being Chief Goon at the EU have demonstrated that it very much matters where it is manufactured.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
The EU have asked companies for advance notification of all exports of vaccines, and an Irish minister on Euro News this morning said that the EU should be looking after their own first, before allowing the export of vaccines.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
Speaks someone who hasn't seen fake news about this first hand. I've watched videos forwarded to my parents full of this bullshit already, it won't be long until the Russian bot farms start to produce these memes and have direct quotes from German scientists to back up their bullshit claims. They've muddied the waters over the cheapest and easiest to transport vaccine that is being produced at a rate of 2bn per year in India for the developing world. It is unforgivable.
The whole point about fake news is that it is fake. It can be made up. Those susceptible to fake news will believe it whatever. The story was appalling. The newspaper and the journalist deserve every bit of crap they are getting. But in the great scheme of things it will make very little practical difference because it was killed too quickly to make it into any mainstream media coverage.
No, the best/worst fake news always has an element of truth, that how it takes off. Well maybe not truth, a verifiable claim. It's how it establishes itself as authoratitive. One of the reasons QAnon took off is because the person who originated it definitely did at one point work in the Whitehouse and there were verifiable pictures of this person taking pictures from inside the west wing of the Whitehouse with their 4Chan tripcode. It established QAnon as authoritative when literally everything related to it is bullshit.
Now we have a respected newspaper authoritatively claiming that this vaccine has got just 8% efficacy. Unfortunately it's exactly the kind of thing that will snowball on Asian and African WhatsApp with pictures and videos claiming a coverup by the German government.
I've had years of explaining to my own mum that these videos are poison and she shouldn't watch them, luckily my sister and I succeeded in convincing her before the pandemic started but loads of my aunts and uncles are deep into these 5G conspiracies and vaccine fake news, one of them messaged in our family group the other day that men under 50 shouldn't get it because it causes infertility according to Japanese scientists.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
I know newspapers are used to dealing with lawyers and disputes, but do they really want all that Legal Big Pharma has to throw at them, from a $130bn company?
This is the key point. Astra Zeneca would not have issued such a categorical, all-encompassing denial if there was anything in the sorry. To do so and then to be shown to be wrong would be a disaster for them even bigger than the one Handelsblatt is now facing -as their lawyers would have pointed out before the denial was issued.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Because the EU, in charge of EU vaccine procurement, is going nuts about AZ not providing enough vaccine to the EU, and this fake news can easily be seen as an organised attack on AZ. Handelsblatt claimed it got the fact from multiple sources in the German government. And, of course, these two things - the EU shouting at AZ, and the fake news about AZ, coincidentally happened on the same day.
Israel new cases 30 days. Doesn't seem that encouraging at the moment.
On the other hand:
Israel, which has already given a full set of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccinations to over 6% of its citizens, has not registered a single serious COVID-19 case among them, even as infections surge in the wider population, the government said on Tuesday.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
The EU have asked companies for advance notification of all exports of vaccines, and an Irish minister on Euro News this morning said that the EU should be looking after their own first, before allowing the export of vaccines.
But that's not what the Handelsblatt story was about, is it?
Vaccine nationalism is another, far more disturbing, if not entirely predictable, development.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
I know newspapers are used to dealing with lawyers and disputes, but do they really want all that Legal Big Pharma has to throw at them, from a $130bn company?
This is the key point. Astra Zeneca would not have issued such a categorical, all-encompassing denial if there was anything in the sorry. To do so and then to be shown to be wrong would be a disaster for them even bigger than the one Handelsblatt is now facing -as their lawyers would have pointed out before the denial was issued.
With respect to Handelsblatt, the quote "They have nailed their trousers to the masthead. And so can't climb down" comes to mind.
Imagine the situation - Who wants to admit to the boss that you and your subordinates have just screwed up spectacularly? And probably put your company in legal jeopardy.
Surely you think this is all a load of nonsense because it's no worse than a bad cold and we should all get back to normal?
Tell you what. I will admit covid is a serious issue.
But then you have to admit that lockdowns have devastating consequences. On children. On young people. On people in poverty. On jobs and the economy. on mental health. On the fabric of society. On human rights. Its eminently clear today.
I at least have tried to have a debate about whether lockdowns are worth it and whether the extent to which the young are being sacrificed is worth it.
All you and others like you have tried to do is shut down debate.
It's a non-debate in terms of the big picture. Every single thing you mention would have been worse with no lockdown. There is no "cost of lockdown" because it was not an either/or choice. Or the cost is negative if you like. It's large and negative.
The valid debate has been - still is - around the details of the restrictions. The timing. The scope. Border control. The balance between trust and law. The extent to which it should be policed. All of this.
You have shown not the slightest interest in having a debate like that. All you've done on this whole topic since the virus emerged is spread lies and write fatuously pretentious faux "man of the world" drivel.
More correctly, the debate should not be about lockdown or not, but about what level of non-medical interventions (social distancing, hand and respiratory hygiene, PPE) is required to minimize the net impact of the outbreak. And that has to include consideration of all the issues Contrarian lists.
It so happens, lockdowns seem to be about the most socially doable mechanism. It need not have been the only option, or even the best one. For example, we could all have agreed to wear full PPE (full Tyvek body suit, booties, gloves, hood, N95, goggles, face shield - assuming no shortages), and gone about our normal business (except eating and drinking in public) and learnt how to don and doff our PPE correctly and decontaminate at the appropriate points in our activities.
There may well have been a better optimal mix of policies. Unfortunately, we'll never know, because this is not an experiment that can be re-run. And no, the UK's experience cannot really be directly compared with that of other nations because a pandemic is a complex adaptive system, a type of system which is extremely sensitive to initial states and inputs - i.e. where outcomes vary massively based on changes of initial state and input below the level at which measurements can be made. I think that drawing any inference from international comparisons is fraught, other than 1. timing is important, and 2. level of compliance with government guidelines/rules is much, much more important for effectiveness than the actual guidelines/rules themselves.
(1) for sure. As for (2) imo the messaging is more important than the precise legal rules since (least here) it's not aggressively policed. It's about getting the public to do the right thing. Which in turn means communicating a proper understanding of the virus and the risks, plus generating a sense of trust in government.
Not sure you are right on the last point - at least not fully so. Messaging - quality, consistency, and multiple channels with multiple champions - is clearly important. But some societies are just better at trusting and hence implementing governmental orders (whether they are good governments or not) and are better about thinking about others rather than themselves. The US and UK are bad (judged in pandemic response terms - these can be good qualities in other fields, such as scientific research and innovation) on both these cultural parameters.
Agree with that. A collectivist - "there's nothing special about me" - mindset is better is these circumstances. Indeed it is in most circumstances imo but that's another story.
Making the statement "there's nothing special about me" is almost self-defeating though isn't it?
If I was of the left I'd argue that the things that make everyone special don't make them unequal. I quite like that emotionally. but is of course ridiculous.
Some people are special. (Horrid though it sounds)
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
The EU have asked companies for advance notification of all exports of vaccines, and an Irish minister on Euro News this morning said that the EU should be looking after their own first, before allowing the export of vaccines.
But that's not what the Handelsblatt story was about, is it?
Vaccine nationalism is another, far more disturbing, if not entirely predictable, development.
No, it’s two separate stories that broke on the same day.
One story about the AZ vaccine being a bit rubbish, and the other about making sure the EU have enough of it, and the Pfizer one too. (The EU haven’t yet approved the AZ vaccine).
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
The sensible thing is to wait until the EMA delivers its expected authorisation and conditions for the Astrazeneca vaccine on Friday. They are not going to make mistakes like this. The problem is the widespread repetition as fact of unsubstantiated and unattributed assertion. Not just a German problem, I have to say...
There is speculation that the EMA will not authorise the AZ vaccine for over 65s. If this happens, I suspect a risk of people coming to the conclusion that the vaccine is unsafe, rather than that the EMA lacks the data to support authorisation, hopefully a temporary situation until the data can be procured.
If they don't authorise it for over 65s, that will crush the vaccination programme in the UK, as oldies refuse AZ and demand Pfizer/Moderna. It will also make AZ unwanted across the world, by all age groups, as everyone decides there must be something fishy about it, remember that "8% thing", and so on and so on.
Max is right. This is potentially a disaster. AZ was meant to be the global workhorse.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
Speaks someone who hasn't seen fake news about this first hand. I've watched videos forwarded to my parents full of this bullshit already, it won't be long until the Russian bot farms start to produce these memes and have direct quotes from German scientists to back up their bullshit claims. They've muddied the waters over the cheapest and easiest to transport vaccine that is being produced at a rate of 2bn per year in India for the developing world. It is unforgivable.
The whole point about fake news is that it is fake. It can be made up. Those susceptible to fake news will believe it whatever. The story was appalling. The newspaper and the journalist deserve every bit of crap they are getting. But in the great scheme of things it will make very little practical difference because it was killed too quickly to make it into any mainstream media coverage.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
The sensible thing is to wait until the EMA delivers its expected authorisation and conditions on Friday. They are not going to make mistakes like this. The problem is the widespread repetition as fact of unsubstantiated and unattributed assertion. Not just a German problem, I have to say...
There is speculation that the EMA will not authorise the AZ vaccine for over 65s. If this happens, I suspect a risk of people coming to the conclusion that the vaccine is unsafe, rather than that the EMA lacks the data to support authorisation, hopefully a temporary situation until the data can be procured.
By that time all our over 65s will already be vaccinated!
Including my mum, on the AZ vaccine. Problem (and bear in mind we are speculating that the EMA might not authorise for over 65s) is that "We don't have the data to support authorisation" sounds like "this thing is unsafe" to people who aren't paying attention. If so, that's a far bigger problem than a random journalist inventing facts in a German paper that hardly anyone has heard of.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
My take on Cummings is that it didn't change people's behaviour, but it allowed wankers who were always going to break the rules to point and say 'look, he did it, so why shouldn't I?'. Basically - it gave them an excuse to justify why they were being wankers.
I'd have thought it would have changed behaviour on the margins too. People who were not too scared of the virus but were just about complying. Yhey see that, then the pathetic Johnson response, and go "fuck it then". Lots of those, I reckon.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Because the EU, in charge of EU vaccine procurement, is going nuts about AZ not providing enough vaccine to the EU, and this fake news can easily be seen as an organised attack on AZ. Handelsblatt claimed it got the fact from multiple sources in the German government. And, of course, these two things - the EU shouting at AZ, and the fake news about AZ, coincidentally happened on the same day.
But hasn't the German government entirely repudiated the story? If the EU really wanted to attack AZN it would not be demanding more of its vaccines. It would be cancelling orders.
That the EU has ballsed up is indisputable. But that is another issue entirely.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
Speaks someone who hasn't seen fake news about this first hand. I've watched videos forwarded to my parents full of this bullshit already, it won't be long until the Russian bot farms start to produce these memes and have direct quotes from German scientists to back up their bullshit claims. They've muddied the waters over the cheapest and easiest to transport vaccine that is being produced at a rate of 2bn per year in India for the developing world. It is unforgivable.
The whole point about fake news is that it is fake. It can be made up. Those susceptible to fake news will believe it whatever. The story was appalling. The newspaper and the journalist deserve every bit of crap they are getting. But in the great scheme of things it will make very little practical difference because it was killed too quickly to make it into any mainstream media coverage.
No, the best/worst fake news always has an element of truth, that how it takes off. Well maybe not truth, a verifiable claim. It's how it establishes itself as authoratitive. One of the reasons QAnon took off is because the person who originated it definitely did at one point work in the Whitehouse and there were verifiable pictures of this person taking pictures from inside the west wing of the Whitehouse with their 4Chan tripcode. It established QAnon as authoritative when literally everything related to it is bullshit.
Now we have a respected newspaper authoritatively claiming that this vaccine has got just 8% efficacy. Unfortunately it's exactly the kind of thing that will snowball on Asian and African WhatsApp with pictures and videos claiming a coverup by the German government.
I've had years of explaining to my own mum that these videos are poison and she shouldn't watch them, luckily my sister and I succeeded in convincing her before the pandemic started but loads of my aunts and uncles are deep into these 5G conspiracies and vaccine fake news, one of them messaged in our family group the other day that men under 50 shouldn't get it because it causes infertility according to Japanese scientists.
Yep. I have anti-vaxxer friends. They live for Fake News like this. It gives them joy. "See, I am not mad, I was right!"
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
The EU have asked companies for advance notification of all exports of vaccines, and an Irish minister on Euro News this morning said that the EU should be looking after their own first, before allowing the export of vaccines.
But that's not what the Handelsblatt story was about, is it?
Vaccine nationalism is another, far more disturbing, if not entirely predictable, development.
No, it’s two separate stories that broke on the same day.
One story about the AZ vaccine being a bit rubbish, and the other about making sure the EU have enough of it, and the Pfizer one too. (The EU haven’t yet approved the AZ vaccine).
It's actually 3 different stories
The AZ vaccine being a bit rubbish (with fake statistics added for good measure) The EU version of the AZ vaccine having manufacturing issues The EU reacting to that by looking at how to see what vaccines are being manufactured (with the add on that the EU want AZ to provide vaccine from the UK and may wish to stop fulfillment of other vaccine exports).
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
What's wrong with that?
Your reading comprehension! I guess you understood around 8 % of that post.
Google translate is your friend here.
Yes the first tweet (not seen) might have been bad but this is addressing that.
And as for @Leon's fake news fear, and others, yes of course there may be some damage but if people are only going to look at one tweet by some German guy as their criterion for having the jab or not perhaps it's best to let them do their thing.
Let's put the shoe on the other foot, it's The Sun making the report and it's about the Belgian Janssen vaccine. The government is experiencing difficulties in procuring it to the extent we wanted and then briefs a journalist to say "it's shite anyway" and that journalist with no investigation simply repeats that as "this is shit" with no presentation of any evidence to support it other than "trust us, we have a source".
Everyone on here playing it down right now would be spitting with rage at Boris and everyone else involved with this.
I think I would care as much as I do about the Handelsblatt thing.
We are a bit "close" to social media and the idea of "fake news" here on PB so we think it's the end of the world. Whereas the vast, vast majority of people wouldn't come close to fake news (what is the Russian bot penetration in Hartlepool?) and this story, by the time it hits these people (of course it won't hit them) will have been amended and corrected in their mode of news consumption.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
Blimey - I had not heard that.
It seems to be a tit-for-tat exercise between a UK supplier favouring the UK, and in response the EU demand EU suppliers favour the EU. The whole affair appears rather unappealing, however as this is PB, it is a case of evil EU bad, plucky England/Boris Johnson good.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
Speaks someone who hasn't seen fake news about this first hand. I've watched videos forwarded to my parents full of this bullshit already, it won't be long until the Russian bot farms start to produce these memes and have direct quotes from German scientists to back up their bullshit claims. They've muddied the waters over the cheapest and easiest to transport vaccine that is being produced at a rate of 2bn per year in India for the developing world. It is unforgivable.
The whole point about fake news is that it is fake. It can be made up. Those susceptible to fake news will believe it whatever. The story was appalling. The newspaper and the journalist deserve every bit of crap they are getting. But in the great scheme of things it will make very little practical difference because it was killed too quickly to make it into any mainstream media coverage.
No, the best/worst fake news always has an element of truth, that how it takes off. Well maybe not truth, a verifiable claim. It's how it establishes itself as authoratitive. One of the reasons QAnon took off is because the person who originated it definitely did at one point work in the Whitehouse and there were verifiable pictures of this person taking pictures from inside the west wing of the Whitehouse with their 4Chan tripcode. It established QAnon as authoritative when literally everything related to it is bullshit.
Now we have a respected newspaper authoritatively claiming that this vaccine has got just 8% efficacy. Unfortunately it's exactly the kind of thing that will snowball on Asian and African WhatsApp with pictures and videos claiming a coverup by the German government.
I've had years of explaining to my own mum that these videos are poison and she shouldn't watch them, luckily my sister and I succeeded in convincing her before the pandemic started but loads of my aunts and uncles are deep into these 5G conspiracies and vaccine fake news, one of them messaged in our family group the other day that men under 50 shouldn't get it because it causes infertility according to Japanese scientists.
Yep. I have anti-vaxxer friends. They live for Fake News like this. It gives them joy. "See, I am not mad, I was right!"
I recently watched David Icke's interviews with Brian Rose, not because I agree with Icke but because I was fascinated to know why he's so popular with a significant number of people.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Because the EU, in charge of EU vaccine procurement, is going nuts about AZ not providing enough vaccine to the EU, and this fake news can easily be seen as an organised attack on AZ. Handelsblatt claimed it got the fact from multiple sources in the German government. And, of course, these two things - the EU shouting at AZ, and the fake news about AZ, coincidentally happened on the same day.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
The sensible thing is to wait until the EMA delivers its expected authorisation and conditions for the Astrazeneca vaccine on Friday. They are not going to make mistakes like this. The problem is the widespread repetition as fact of unsubstantiated and unattributed assertion. Not just a German problem, I have to say...
There is speculation that the EMA will not authorise the AZ vaccine for over 65s. If this happens, I suspect a risk of people coming to the conclusion that the vaccine is unsafe, rather than that the EMA lacks the data to support authorisation, hopefully a temporary situation until the data can be procured.
If they do not authorise it there will be a very good reason. As far as I can tell there isn't one, so they will.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
Blimey - I had not heard that.
It seems to be a tit-for-tat exercise between a UK supplier favouring the UK, and in response the EU demand EU suppliers favour the EU. The whole affair appears rather unappealing, however as this is PB, it is a case of evil EU bad, plucky England/Boris Johnson good.
But there is no favouritism. Otherwise the UK wouldn't have faced similar shortfalls in its orders.
The EU's order came in three months late. Back of the queue.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
It's bad for sure. But remember all those facebooks about Cummings. That was bad and all over the place too. And that was a (very) senior UK govt official not obscure German fake news.
This is not whataboutery, I stress again. It's genuine intellectual inquiry.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
The EU have asked companies for advance notification of all exports of vaccines, and an Irish minister on Euro News this morning said that the EU should be looking after their own first, before allowing the export of vaccines.
But that's not what the Handelsblatt story was about, is it?
Vaccine nationalism is another, far more disturbing, if not entirely predictable, development.
No, it’s two separate stories that broke on the same day.
One story about the AZ vaccine being a bit rubbish, and the other about making sure the EU have enough of it, and the Pfizer one too. (The EU haven’t yet approved the AZ vaccine).
It's actually 3 different stories
The AZ vaccine being a bit rubbish (with fake statistics added for good measure) The EU version of the AZ vaccine having manufacturing issues The EU reacting to that by looking at how to see what vaccines are being manufactured (with the add on that the EU want AZ to provide vaccine from the UK and may wish to stop fulfillment of other vaccine exports).
I think it's one story, around the EU having problems with their vaccine procurement programme, and the various sub-stories are all just expressions of that. The first two appearing on the same day is not a coincidence.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
Blimey - I had not heard that.
It seems to be a tit-for-tat exercise between a UK supplier favouring the UK, and in response the EU demand EU suppliers favour the EU. The whole affair appears rather unappealing, however as this is PB, it is a case of evil EU bad, plucky England/Boris Johnson good.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
I know newspapers are used to dealing with lawyers and disputes, but do they really want all that Legal Big Pharma has to throw at them, from a $130bn company?
This is the key point. Astra Zeneca would not have issued such a categorical, all-encompassing denial if there was anything in the sorry. To do so and then to be shown to be wrong would be a disaster for them even bigger than the one Handelsblatt is now facing -as their lawyers would have pointed out before the denial was issued.
With respect to Handelsblatt, the quote "They have nailed their trousers to the masthead. And so can't climb down" comes to mind.
Imagine the situation - Who wants to admit to the boss that you and your subordinates have just screwed up spectacularly? And probably put your company in legal jeopardy.
In that situation, I’d be letting the boss know as quickly as possible. And his boss too.
AZ aren’t going to just drop this, Handelsblatt has a pretty good chance of becoming the next News of the World or Gawker.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
It came from German politicians at ministerial level on the same day that the EU was hinting at AZN dirty tricks over vaccines and asking them to divert supplies meant for the UK. The suggestion was sent to all 27 member states. Where have you been?
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Because the EU, in charge of EU vaccine procurement, is going nuts about AZ not providing enough vaccine to the EU, and this fake news can easily be seen as an organised attack on AZ. Handelsblatt claimed it got the fact from multiple sources in the German government. And, of course, these two things - the EU shouting at AZ, and the fake news about AZ, coincidentally happened on the same day.
But hasn't the German government entirely repudiated the story? If the EU really wanted to attack AZN it would not be demanding more of its vaccines. It would be cancelling orders.
That the EU has ballsed up is indisputable. But that is another issue entirely.
Definitely blameshifting, but also it seems also the EU thinks Astrazeneca is taking it for a ride. Which it quite likely is, but what was a contractual dispute has now spilt over into geopolitical argument.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
Speaks someone who hasn't seen fake news about this first hand. I've watched videos forwarded to my parents full of this bullshit already, it won't be long until the Russian bot farms start to produce these memes and have direct quotes from German scientists to back up their bullshit claims. They've muddied the waters over the cheapest and easiest to transport vaccine that is being produced at a rate of 2bn per year in India for the developing world. It is unforgivable.
The whole point about fake news is that it is fake. It can be made up. Those susceptible to fake news will believe it whatever. The story was appalling. The newspaper and the journalist deserve every bit of crap they are getting. But in the great scheme of things it will make very little practical difference because it was killed too quickly to make it into any mainstream media coverage.
No, the best/worst fake news always has an element of truth, that how it takes off. Well maybe not truth, a verifiable claim. It's how it establishes itself as authoratitive. One of the reasons QAnon took off is because the person who originated it definitely did at one point work in the Whitehouse and there were verifiable pictures of this person taking pictures from inside the west wing of the Whitehouse with their 4Chan tripcode. It established QAnon as authoritative when literally everything related to it is bullshit.
Now we have a respected newspaper authoritatively claiming that this vaccine has got just 8% efficacy. Unfortunately it's exactly the kind of thing that will snowball on Asian and African WhatsApp with pictures and videos claiming a coverup by the German government.
I've had years of explaining to my own mum that these videos are poison and she shouldn't watch them, luckily my sister and I succeeded in convincing her before the pandemic started but loads of my aunts and uncles are deep into these 5G conspiracies and vaccine fake news, one of them messaged in our family group the other day that men under 50 shouldn't get it because it causes infertility according to Japanese scientists.
Yep. I have anti-vaxxer friends. They live for Fake News like this. It gives them joy. "See, I am not mad, I was right!"
Yes, it will confirm the views many people already have. That is the damage.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
The EU have asked companies for advance notification of all exports of vaccines, and an Irish minister on Euro News this morning said that the EU should be looking after their own first, before allowing the export of vaccines.
But that's not what the Handelsblatt story was about, is it?
Vaccine nationalism is another, far more disturbing, if not entirely predictable, development.
No, it’s two separate stories that broke on the same day.
One story about the AZ vaccine being a bit rubbish, and the other about making sure the EU have enough of it, and the Pfizer one too. (The EU haven’t yet approved the AZ vaccine).
It's actually 3 different stories
The AZ vaccine being a bit rubbish (with fake statistics added for good measure) The EU version of the AZ vaccine having manufacturing issues The EU reacting to that by looking at how to see what vaccines are being manufactured (with the add on that the EU want AZ to provide vaccine from the UK and may wish to stop fulfillment of other vaccine exports).
I think it's one story, around the EU having problems with their vaccine procurement programme, and the various sub-stories are all just expressions of that. The first two appearing on the same day is not a coincidence.
Nope 3 different stories - you can merge them into 1 if you want but there are definitely different.
1 comes from people not being able to read while seeing what looks like a great story (I would blame their statistically learns but it seems to be an inability to understand what the numbers were before anything else). 2 is the reason for part 3
But 3 is a separate story about the reaction to the second story.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Because the EU, in charge of EU vaccine procurement, is going nuts about AZ not providing enough vaccine to the EU, and this fake news can easily be seen as an organised attack on AZ. Handelsblatt claimed it got the fact from multiple sources in the German government. And, of course, these two things - the EU shouting at AZ, and the fake news about AZ, coincidentally happened on the same day.
But hasn't the German government entirely repudiated the story? If the EU really wanted to attack AZN it would not be demanding more of its vaccines. It would be cancelling orders.
That the EU has ballsed up is indisputable. But that is another issue entirely.
Definitely blameshifting, but also it seems also the EU thinks Astrazeneca is taking it for a ride. Which it quite likely is, but what was a contractual dispute has now spilt over into geopolitical argument.
"Which it quite likely is".
Do you actually have any evidence to back this claim up?
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
It's nothing to do with the EU unless you have an appetite for outlandish conspiracy theories.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
And yet you say "Blimey - I had not heard that." Not seeing the full picture, perhaps?
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
I know newspapers are used to dealing with lawyers and disputes, but do they really want all that Legal Big Pharma has to throw at them, from a $130bn company?
This is the key point. Astra Zeneca would not have issued such a categorical, all-encompassing denial if there was anything in the sorry. To do so and then to be shown to be wrong would be a disaster for them even bigger than the one Handelsblatt is now facing -as their lawyers would have pointed out before the denial was issued.
With respect to Handelsblatt, the quote "They have nailed their trousers to the masthead. And so can't climb down" comes to mind.
Imagine the situation - Who wants to admit to the boss that you and your subordinates have just screwed up spectacularly? And probably put your company in legal jeopardy.
In that situation, I’d be letting the boss know as quickly as possible. And his boss too.
AZ aren’t going to just drop this, Handelsblatt has a pretty good chance of becoming the next News of the World or Gawker.
Whoever owns up is looking at being in the street in minutes.
They will be frantically calling their contact in the German government. Who has now dropped his phone in a canal.
Everyone will be trying to claim it was (a) someone else (b) the story was verified or they were told the story was verified.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
Speaks someone who hasn't seen fake news about this first hand. I've watched videos forwarded to my parents full of this bullshit already, it won't be long until the Russian bot farms start to produce these memes and have direct quotes from German scientists to back up their bullshit claims. They've muddied the waters over the cheapest and easiest to transport vaccine that is being produced at a rate of 2bn per year in India for the developing world. It is unforgivable.
The whole point about fake news is that it is fake. It can be made up. Those susceptible to fake news will believe it whatever. The story was appalling. The newspaper and the journalist deserve every bit of crap they are getting. But in the great scheme of things it will make very little practical difference because it was killed too quickly to make it into any mainstream media coverage.
No, the best/worst fake news always has an element of truth, that how it takes off. Well maybe not truth, a verifiable claim. It's how it establishes itself as authoratitive. One of the reasons QAnon took off is because the person who originated it definitely did at one point work in the Whitehouse and there were verifiable pictures of this person taking pictures from inside the west wing of the Whitehouse with their 4Chan tripcode. It established QAnon as authoritative when literally everything related to it is bullshit.
Now we have a respected newspaper authoritatively claiming that this vaccine has got just 8% efficacy. Unfortunately it's exactly the kind of thing that will snowball on Asian and African WhatsApp with pictures and videos claiming a coverup by the German government.
I've had years of explaining to my own mum that these videos are poison and she shouldn't watch them, luckily my sister and I succeeded in convincing her before the pandemic started but loads of my aunts and uncles are deep into these 5G conspiracies and vaccine fake news, one of them messaged in our family group the other day that men under 50 shouldn't get it because it causes infertility according to Japanese scientists.
Yep. I have anti-vaxxer friends. They live for Fake News like this. It gives them joy. "See, I am not mad, I was right!"
Yes, it will confirm the views many people already have. That is the damage.
And push a lot of people over the edge into that camp. Like everything else in life, it's the incremental effect and unfortunately those c***s sharing this will do a lot to convince others that vaccines are ineffective so why take the risk.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
The sensible thing is to wait until the EMA delivers its expected authorisation and conditions for the Astrazeneca vaccine on Friday. They are not going to make mistakes like this. The problem is the widespread repetition as fact of unsubstantiated and unattributed assertion. Not just a German problem, I have to say...
There is speculation that the EMA will not authorise the AZ vaccine for over 65s. If this happens, I suspect a risk of people coming to the conclusion that the vaccine is unsafe, rather than that the EMA lacks the data to support authorisation, hopefully a temporary situation until the data can be procured.
If they do not authorise it there will be a very good reason. As far as I can tell there isn't one, so they will.
Not sure. The FDA aren't authorising at all on this data. Nor the Canadian regulator.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
The EU live rent free in @MarqueeMark 's head so everything is about them, unfortunately.
Very noisy data, and as I've said before I don't think he should be doing a straight line fit, but arguably there is some preliminary evidence in this chart that the UK vaccination programme is beginning to save lives amongst those vaccinated earliest (the over 80s). Worth watching to see if the ratio falls significantly over the next few days:
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
It came from German politicians at ministerial level on the same day that the EU was hinting at AZN dirty tricks over vaccines and asking them to divert supplies meant for the UK. The suggestion was sent to all 27 member states. Where have you been?
So, the EU directed German government ministers to feed a fake story to a single German newspaper, and no newspaper anywhere else in the EU, designed to discredit Astra Zeneca's vaccine at the same time as it was demanding more supplies of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Got it.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
The sensible thing is to wait until the EMA delivers its expected authorisation and conditions on Friday. They are not going to make mistakes like this. The problem is the widespread repetition as fact of unsubstantiated and unattributed assertion. Not just a German problem, I have to say...
There is speculation that the EMA will not authorise the AZ vaccine for over 65s. If this happens, I suspect a risk of people coming to the conclusion that the vaccine is unsafe, rather than that the EMA lacks the data to support authorisation, hopefully a temporary situation until the data can be procured.
By that time all our over 65s will already be vaccinated!
Including my mum, on the AZ vaccine. Problem (and bear in mind we are speculating that the EMA might not authorise for over 65s) is that "We don't have the data to support authorisation" sounds like "this thing is unsafe" to people who aren't paying attention. If so, that's a far bigger problem than a random journalist inventing facts in a German paper that hardly anyone has heard of.
The Handelsblatt story was repeated all across global media, eg Reuters, BusinessInsider, Forbes. the Guardian, it must have been relayed through social media around the world in the last 24 hours
Now, if the EMA says the vaccine can only be used by under 65s, many millions will conclude that the vaccine is rubbish, wait for Pfizer. It's the combination which is so toxic. These are tweets from the last few minutes
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
It came from German politicians at ministerial level on the same day that the EU was hinting at AZN dirty tricks over vaccines and asking them to divert supplies meant for the UK. The suggestion was sent to all 27 member states. Where have you been?
So, the EU directed German government ministers to feed a fake story to a single German newspaper, and no newspaper anywhere else in the EU, designed to discredit Astra Zeneca's vaccine at the same time as it was demanding more supplies of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Got it.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
Are you not? Bloody hell.
No, I'm not. As someone who has bee involved in journalism for 30 years I am seeing it as a story about a newspaper and a journalist who have got something terribly, terribly wrong. I don't see what the EU has to do with this at all. It does not own the newspaper or control its output.
It's nothing to do with the EU unless you have an appetite for outlandish conspiracy theories.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
The sensible thing is to wait until the EMA delivers its expected authorisation and conditions on Friday. They are not going to make mistakes like this. The problem is the widespread repetition as fact of unsubstantiated and unattributed assertion. Not just a German problem, I have to say...
There is speculation that the EMA will not authorise the AZ vaccine for over 65s. If this happens, I suspect a risk of people coming to the conclusion that the vaccine is unsafe, rather than that the EMA lacks the data to support authorisation, hopefully a temporary situation until the data can be procured.
By that time all our over 65s will already be vaccinated!
Including my mum, on the AZ vaccine. Problem (and bear in mind we are speculating that the EMA might not authorise for over 65s) is that "We don't have the data to support authorisation" sounds like "this thing is unsafe" to people who aren't paying attention. If so, that's a far bigger problem than a random journalist inventing facts in a German paper that hardly anyone has heard of.
The Handelsblatt story was repeated all across global media, eg Reuters, BusinessInsider, Forbes. the Guardian, it must have been relayed through social media around the world in the last 24 hours
Now, if the EMA says the vaccine can only be used by under 65s, many millions will conclude that the vaccine is rubbish, wait for Pfizer. It's the combination which is so toxic. These are tweets from the last few minutes
Yes, you don't ship 3.2 million bodies across the Atlantic without some serious professionals watching your back. Credit where credit is due.
Who did more to save Africans/Americans from slavery - Hariet Tubman or the Royal Navy?
Harriet Tubman. You need to nett the number of slave ships the RN protected until 1808 against the number of people saved from slavery afterwards. The result would be several million in the negative.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
It came from German politicians at ministerial level on the same day that the EU was hinting at AZN dirty tricks over vaccines and asking them to divert supplies meant for the UK. The suggestion was sent to all 27 member states. Where have you been?
So, the EU directed German government ministers to feed a fake story to a single German newspaper, and no newspaper anywhere else in the EU, designed to discredit Astra Zeneca's vaccine at the same time as it was demanding more supplies of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Got it.
No one is claiming the behaviour of the EU, the German government, or Handelsblatt, has been rational over the last 24 hours.
No, China +16.8% (2020-22 cumulative growth) and UK -1.2% is notable. Only Italy is also projected to see its economy shrink over the course of the three years. In any case, and with great respect to the IMF, economists only project growth two years out in the midst of an unprecedented economic shock to prove they have a sense of humour.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
Asking is different to demanding, but it's a terrible look. They have really messed this up big time.
It's not just the EU - here in Spain as the numbers go through the roof the Health minister buggers off to campaign in the Catalonian election, we've had mayors, army generals, local health officials and today, a Bishop who've all jumped the very long queue! Most people are laughing as the alternative is.....
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
Surely you think this is all a load of nonsense because it's no worse than a bad cold and we should all get back to normal?
Tell you what. I will admit covid is a serious issue.
But then you have to admit that lockdowns have devastating consequences. On children. On young people. On people in poverty. On jobs and the economy. on mental health. On the fabric of society. On human rights. Its eminently clear today.
I at least have tried to have a debate about whether lockdowns are worth it and whether the extent to which the young are being sacrificed is worth it.
All you and others like you have tried to do is shut down debate.
It's a non-debate in terms of the big picture. Every single thing you mention would have been worse with no lockdown. There is no "cost of lockdown" because it was not an either/or choice. Or the cost is negative if you like. It's large and negative.
The valid debate has been - still is - around the details of the restrictions. The timing. The scope. Border control. The balance between trust and law. The extent to which it should be policed. All of this.
You have shown not the slightest interest in having a debate like that. All you've done on this whole topic since the virus emerged is spread lies and write fatuously pretentious faux "man of the world" drivel.
More correctly, the debate should not be about lockdown or not, but about what level of non-medical interventions (social distancing, hand and respiratory hygiene, PPE) is required to minimize the net impact of the outbreak. And that has to include consideration of all the issues Contrarian lists.
It so happens, lockdowns seem to be about the most socially doable mechanism. It need not have been the only option, or even the best one. For example, we could all have agreed to wear full PPE (full Tyvek body suit, booties, gloves, hood, N95, goggles, face shield - assuming no shortages), and gone about our normal business (except eating and drinking in public) and learnt how to don and doff our PPE correctly and decontaminate at the appropriate points in our activities.
There may well have been a better optimal mix of policies. Unfortunately, we'll never know, because this is not an experiment that can be re-run. And no, the UK's experience cannot really be directly compared with that of other nations because a pandemic is a complex adaptive system, a type of system which is extremely sensitive to initial states and inputs - i.e. where outcomes vary massively based on changes of initial state and input below the level at which measurements can be made. I think that drawing any inference from international comparisons is fraught, other than 1. timing is important, and 2. level of compliance with government guidelines/rules is much, much more important for effectiveness than the actual guidelines/rules themselves.
(1) for sure. As for (2) imo the messaging is more important than the precise legal rules since (least here) it's not aggressively policed. It's about getting the public to do the right thing. Which in turn means communicating a proper understanding of the virus and the risks, plus generating a sense of trust in government.
Not sure you are right on the last point - at least not fully so. Messaging - quality, consistency, and multiple channels with multiple champions - is clearly important. But some societies are just better at trusting and hence implementing governmental orders (whether they are good governments or not) and are better about thinking about others rather than themselves. The US and UK are bad (judged in pandemic response terms - these can be good qualities in other fields, such as scientific research and innovation) on both these cultural parameters.
Agree with that. A collectivist - "there's nothing special about me" - mindset is better is these circumstances. Indeed it is in most circumstances imo but that's another story.
Making the statement "there's nothing special about me" is almost self-defeating though isn't it?
If I was of the left I'd argue that the things that make everyone special don't make them unequal. I quite like that emotionally. but is of course ridiculous.
Some people are special. (Horrid though it sounds)
As I view it, people are vastly more the same than they are different. They mostly want the same things, their abilities are clustered around the mean, and even the outliers are not as special as they might at first appear.
But so many deaths: I guess we're heading for close to 150k in all (only the vaccine might keep it below).
It's a relief that the cases are coming down, though I never really subscribed to the theory that the new variant was impossible to control through lockdown.
But there will be plenty of idiots who advance the argument "lockdown is working, therefore it's vital that we end it!".
Comments
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
https://twitter.com/handelsblatt/status/1353992634570854402?s=20
Maybe people letting their guard down?
I do admit that home manufacture, even with a foreign supply chain, gives us more control over the finished product. It doesn't however prevent "the enemy" from cutting off supply.
Anecdotally I hear the same from elsewhere.
I know newspapers are used to dealing with lawyers and disputes, but do they really want all that Legal Big Pharma has to throw at them, from a $130bn company?
There is speculation that the EMA will not authorise the AZ vaccine for over 65s. If this happens, I suspect a risk of people coming to the conclusion that the vaccine is unsafe, rather than that the EMA lacks the data to support authorisation, hopefully a temporary situation until the data can be procured.
As you're 'gallowgate' I'll allow a most excellent sample. Not sure that your argument, even with my endorsement, gets you through the gates though.
Now we have a respected newspaper authoritatively claiming that this vaccine has got just 8% efficacy. Unfortunately it's exactly the kind of thing that will snowball on Asian and African WhatsApp with pictures and videos claiming a coverup by the German government.
I've had years of explaining to my own mum that these videos are poison and she shouldn't watch them, luckily my sister and I succeeded in convincing her before the pandemic started but loads of my aunts and uncles are deep into these 5G conspiracies and vaccine fake news, one of them messaged in our family group the other day that men under 50 shouldn't get it because it causes infertility according to Japanese scientists.
What a bummer.
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1354006295637078016?s=20
Israel, which has already given a full set of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccinations to over 6% of its citizens, has not registered a single serious COVID-19 case among them, even as infections surge in the wider population, the government said on Tuesday.
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-israel-pfizer-int/no-serious-covid-19-cases-among-israelis-given-pfizer-shot-minister-says-idUSKBN29V1DV
Vaccine nationalism is another, far more disturbing, if not entirely predictable, development.
Imagine the situation - Who wants to admit to the boss that you and your subordinates have just screwed up spectacularly? And probably put your company in legal jeopardy.
If I was of the left I'd argue that the things that make everyone special don't make them unequal. I quite like that emotionally. but is of course ridiculous.
Some people are special. (Horrid though it sounds)
One story about the AZ vaccine being a bit rubbish, and the other about making sure the EU have enough of it, and the Pfizer one too. (The EU haven’t yet approved the AZ vaccine).
Max is right. This is potentially a disaster. AZ was meant to be the global workhorse.
That the EU has ballsed up is indisputable. But that is another issue entirely.
The AZ vaccine being a bit rubbish (with fake statistics added for good measure)
The EU version of the AZ vaccine having manufacturing issues
The EU reacting to that by looking at how to see what vaccines are being manufactured (with the add on that the EU want AZ to provide vaccine from the UK and may wish to stop fulfillment of other vaccine exports).
We are a bit "close" to social media and the idea of "fake news" here on PB so we think it's the end of the world. Whereas the vast, vast majority of people wouldn't come close to fake news (what is the Russian bot penetration in Hartlepool?) and this story, by the time it hits these people (of course it won't hit them) will have been amended and corrected in their mode of news consumption.
The EU's order came in three months late. Back of the queue.
This is not whataboutery, I stress again. It's genuine intellectual inquiry.
AZ aren’t going to just drop this, Handelsblatt has a pretty good chance of becoming the next News of the World or Gawker.
You see, being a PPE wonk comes in handy sometimes.
Good effort.
1 comes from people not being able to read while seeing what looks like a great story (I would blame their statistically learns but it seems to be an inability to understand what the numbers were before anything else).
2 is the reason for part 3
But 3 is a separate story about the reaction to the second story.
Do you actually have any evidence to back this claim up?
Lockdown working. Who'd have thunk it.
They will be frantically calling their contact in the German government. Who has now dropped his phone in a canal.
Everyone will be trying to claim it was (a) someone else (b) the story was verified or they were told the story was verified.
https://twitter.com/george_yarrow/status/1354077547168980992
Now, if the EMA says the vaccine can only be used by under 65s, many millions will conclude that the vaccine is rubbish, wait for Pfizer. It's the combination which is so toxic. These are tweets from the last few minutes
https://twitter.com/Eelze60/status/1354104932182458368?s=20
https://twitter.com/vasathan8/status/1354105027015667717?s=20
https://twitter.com/Roby30930350/status/1354107035609165824?s=20
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/keir-starmer-labour-covid-b901186.html
https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1354060537668247552?s=20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woodentops_(TV_series)
I loved the woodentops.
Apres lui le deluge.
In any case, and with great respect to the IMF, economists only project growth two years out in the midst of an unprecedented economic shock to prove they have a sense of humour.
I call fake news.
It's a relief that the cases are coming down, though I never really subscribed to the theory that the new variant was impossible to control through lockdown.
But there will be plenty of idiots who advance the argument "lockdown is working, therefore it's vital that we end it!".
--AS