Anyone know why the EU spent 3 months haggling over the price of a vaccine that's being made "not for profit?"
I understood that it is planned to be made available at cost, but not yet. The early orders from the first world presumably need to recoup the development costs before the rest of the world gets access at manufacturing cost.
Anyone know why the EU spent 3 months haggling over the price of a vaccine that's being made "not for profit?"
The thing is the sums are insane when you stop to think about them. Billions yes but . . .
The UK has spent about £29 per person to build up vaccine manufacturing and procurement. The EU have spent about £4 per person doing so. £25 per person is the difference, means we spent about 7x the amount they did and have got our manufacturing working . . . but what is £25 per person when it comes to the cost of the pandemic?
Its chicken feed compared to the pandemic costs. The pandemic is costing the country about £6bn a week - the whole cost of the vaccine priming has cost the UK about 2 days worth of pandemic costs. Two days, to get a working vaccine.
"The Oxford coronavirus vaccine - which is set to be manufactured at Keele following an agreement between Cobra Biologics and AstraZeneca UK - shows a strong immune response in adults in their 60s and 70s, raising hopes that it can protect age groups most at risk from the virus."
Fake news. Some chap in Germany heard from a mate down the pub it was shit, so that’s why the Germans want loads of it, or something.
Actually very good news, but not unexpected. Matches the phase II data on antibody production.
This subject was raised repeatedly on here during the demolition of the 8% story the other evening. It's discussed in the Lancet article on the phase III trials.
The issue with the trials for the Oxford vaccine does not appear to be that it is wholly ineffective in the old, but rather that there were insufficient older people included in the trials to arrive at a proper statistical conclusion as to *exactly* how effective the vaccine was in the over 55s.
One has to assume that the MHRA, when they reviewed the available evidence, concluded that the vaccine was highly likely to be good enough, despite this paucity of data, and decided to roll with it. To the layman, that seems logical: if the immune response seen in the older recipients was about as strong as that seen in the younger ones then, even if the vaccine is slightly less effective in older people, it doesn't seem plausible that any drop-off in performance would occur suddenly and catastrophically just because someone has recently received some 55th (or 65th, or 75th) birthday cards.
Quite. I didn't want to post about this as I am no scientist but even with my GCSE in Chemistry (an 'A' I'll have you know) it seemed quite incredible that a vaccine with a 70% success rate (or 90% - that's one of the problems) would have its efficacy plummit off a cliff at an arbitrary age. A gradual decline, sure, I get that. But not a compound that suddenly goes on strike the day its host becomes eligible for a bus pass.
For my part I have a biology degree, albeit that I graduated 23 years ago and never used it so it hardly counts!
But anyway, whilst I obviously can't be completely sure that this decision won't go pear-shaped, logic suggests that this is unlikely. The same applies to the decision to delay the Pfizer booster jabs as well: the regulator clearly seems to consider it improbable that extending from three weeks to twelve will render the initial shot useless, and that's good enough for me. The overall plan is obviously to maximise the number of people who receive some protection from Covid, rather than providing a gold standard service for a smaller group of very old people, at the expense of those slightly lower down the priority list having to wait months for any at all. A bit less advantageous for the ancient, better for society collectively. This seems appropriate given the circumstances.
If he did so, would that not make Swayne a martyr, draw attention to his theories, and 'confirm' the view of these people of a shadowy conspiracy by those in power to silence the truth?
Better to ignore him.
I really think we generally overestimate the risks of making people 'martyrs'. It seems to come up with pretty much any issue as an excuse not to take action against a person, as if every person who could face consequences for their actions and words will become more powerful than we can imagine if they are struck down.
Swayne is a mouthy backbencher with a rock solid seat for life who already has a gong so wouldn't even keep his mouth shut on the hope he''ll get honoured one day in reward. It may well be that in general he can be kept in the tent pissing out, but a situation like this creates a new context for his pissing and it may perhaps be reconsidered that some people thinking him martyred may be less harmful than taking action.
And going on about hidden agendas and such, seeing conspiracies in public health measures, is indeed dangerous and extremely silly. Conspiracy theorists as MPs is troublesome.
We need mouthy backbenchers. We also need people who speak out about what they regard to be conspiracies in public health measures - if such situations were ever to occur. I am glad rather than sad that the fruitier side of politics is represented within the Commons, rather than just by powerless and resentful people outside of the system, it's a healthy pressure valve, and it would be horrendous, absolutely horrendous, if ones views had to be modified in order to become an MP.
I think you've missed a key part of my point.
I'm in favour of mouthy backbenchers and MPs on the fruitier side of politics. That's why 'in general' it is better not to take any action against them. But in this particular context the benefits of an MP speaking his mind with the weight of the Tory Whip and graced with a safe seat for life even though he causes difficulty with his behaviour and comments, may be outweighed in these circumstances because of the very real danger than a man with such weight and security can do, as there is no other way of constraining him.
And we may well need people to speak out with regard to conspiracies, in fact we definitely do. But if someone were to routinely see conspiracies which do not exist, they would in fact undermine the uncovery of actual conspiracies. He sees at least one, I don't know if that is a trend, but it's not a good sign.
"The Oxford coronavirus vaccine - which is set to be manufactured at Keele following an agreement between Cobra Biologics and AstraZeneca UK - shows a strong immune response in adults in their 60s and 70s, raising hopes that it can protect age groups most at risk from the virus."
Fake news. Some chap in Germany heard from a mate down the pub it was shit, so that’s why the Germans want loads of it, or something.
Actually very good news, but not unexpected. Matches the phase II data on antibody production.
This subject was raised repeatedly on here during the demolition of the 8% story the other evening. It's discussed in the Lancet article on the phase III trials.
The issue with the trials for the Oxford vaccine does not appear to be that it is wholly ineffective in the old, but rather that there were insufficient older people included in the trials to arrive at a proper statistical conclusion as to *exactly* how effective the vaccine was in the over 55s.
One has to assume that the MHRA, when they reviewed the available evidence, concluded that the vaccine was highly likely to be good enough, despite this paucity of data, and decided to roll with it. To the layman, that seems logical: if the immune response seen in the older recipients was about as strong as that seen in the younger ones then, even if the vaccine is slightly less effective in older people, it doesn't seem plausible that any drop-off in performance would occur suddenly and catastrophically just because someone has recently received some 55th (or 65th, or 75th) birthday cards.
Quite. I didn't want to post about this as I am no scientist but even with my GCSE in Chemistry (an 'A' I'll have you know) it seemed quite incredible that a vaccine with a 70% success rate (or 90% - that's one of the problems) would have its efficacy plummit off a cliff at an arbitrary age. A gradual decline, sure, I get that. But not a compound that suddenly goes on strike the day its host becomes eligible for a bus pass.
For my part I have a biology degree, albeit that I graduated 23 years ago and never used it so it hardly counts!
But anyway, whilst I obviously can't be completely sure that this decision won't go pear-shaped, logic suggests that this is unlikely. The same applies to the decision to delay the Pfizer booster jabs as well: the regulator clearly seems to consider it improbable that extending from three weeks to twelve will render the initial shot useless, and that's good enough for me. The overall plan is obviously to maximise the number of people who receive some protection from Covid, rather than providing a gold standard service for a smaller group of very old people, at the expense of those slightly lower down the priority list having to wait months for any at all. A bit less advantageous for the ancient, better for society collectively. This seems appropriate given the circumstances.
If the uk has spare vaccines which we will in the future we absolutely should not send them to the eu. Instead send them to the third world the eu is in theory rich enough to finances its own and its no ones fault but theirs if they failed
Last note on the meeting, on mutations they kept coming back to the same point over and over again, the fewer infections there are, the fewer infected people there are, the less virus there is in bloodstreams, the less chance there is of a serious mutation. They explained to me in terms of maths which I think a lot of people will find helpful here:
A virus has a 1 in 1m chance of mutating during the replication process in a cell. In a country if you have 1m people infected you give the virus a huge chance of mutating everyday and it leads to a high number of individual mutations that can eventually lead to a random chance that causes vaccine resistance. If in the same country only 100 people are infected there is almost no opportunity for the virus to mutate as it can only do so during replication process.
They say that the virus has mutated seriously in the UK, SA, Brazil, California, Belgium and Spain isn't a surprise because all of these countries have got a lot of virus in circulation. They think that Europe has seen a number of slightly more infectious versions similar to the Kent variant but lack of monitoring means we'll never know. It's been impossible to convince European governments to invest in monitoring as the UK has done, many prefer the approach of not knowing because they can't be targeted for travel bans that way.
Edit: the point being that they backed the government stance on jabbing as many people as possible because it would help to reduce the number of events and therefore chances of a serious mutation. They think the government scientists are also using this same modelling for justification.
Good to hear from the National Education Union that they aren't calling for teachers to jump the queue for a vaccine over the elderly.
Despicably low and cynical politicking from the Labour Party - I am very impressed the Union isn't stooping so low. Well done them, Starmer should be ashamed of himself but he won't be.
"The Oxford coronavirus vaccine - which is set to be manufactured at Keele following an agreement between Cobra Biologics and AstraZeneca UK - shows a strong immune response in adults in their 60s and 70s, raising hopes that it can protect age groups most at risk from the virus."
Fake news. Some chap in Germany heard from a mate down the pub it was shit, so that’s why the Germans want loads of it, or something.
Actually very good news, but not unexpected. Matches the phase II data on antibody production.
This subject was raised repeatedly on here during the demolition of the 8% story the other evening. It's discussed in the Lancet article on the phase III trials.
The issue with the trials for the Oxford vaccine does not appear to be that it is wholly ineffective in the old, but rather that there were insufficient older people included in the trials to arrive at a proper statistical conclusion as to *exactly* how effective the vaccine was in the over 55s.
One has to assume that the MHRA, when they reviewed the available evidence, concluded that the vaccine was highly likely to be good enough, despite this paucity of data, and decided to roll with it. To the layman, that seems logical: if the immune response seen in the older recipients was about as strong as that seen in the younger ones then, even if the vaccine is slightly less effective in older people, it doesn't seem plausible that any drop-off in performance would occur suddenly and catastrophically just because someone has recently received some 55th (or 65th, or 75th) birthday cards.
Quite. I didn't want to post about this as I am no scientist but even with my GCSE in Chemistry (an 'A' I'll have you know) it seemed quite incredible that a vaccine with a 70% success rate (or 90% - that's one of the problems) would have its efficacy plummit off a cliff at an arbitrary age. A gradual decline, sure, I get that. But not a compound that suddenly goes on strike the day its host becomes eligible for a bus pass.
For my part I have a biology degree, albeit that I graduated 23 years ago and never used it so it hardly counts!
But anyway, whilst I obviously can't be completely sure that this decision won't go pear-shaped, logic suggests that this is unlikely. The same applies to the decision to delay the Pfizer booster jabs as well: the regulator clearly seems to consider it improbable that extending from three weeks to twelve will render the initial shot useless, and that's good enough for me. The overall plan is obviously to maximise the number of people who receive some protection from Covid, rather than providing a gold standard service for a smaller group of very old people, at the expense of those slightly lower down the priority list having to wait months for any at all. A bit less advantageous for the ancient, better for society collectively. This seems appropriate given the circumstances.
Yes. It's a trade off. Give away some protection for some individuals in return for the greater macro benefit of double the number of people with some protection. It's a panic measure but I think it's justified.
Last note on the meeting, on mutations they kept coming back to the same point over and over again, the fewer infections there are, the fewer infected people there are, the less virus there is in bloodstreams, the less chance there is of a serious mutation. They explained to me in terms of maths which I think a lot of people will find helpful here:
A virus has a 1 in 1m chance of mutating during the replication process in a cell. In a country if you have 1m people infected you give the virus a huge chance of mutating everyday and it leads to a high number of individual mutations that can eventually lead to a random chance that causes vaccine resistance. If in the same country only 100 people are infected there is almost no opportunity for the virus to mutate as it can only do so during replication process.
They say that the virus has mutated seriously in the UK, SA, Brazil, California, Belgium and Spain isn't a surprise because all of these countries have got a lot of virus in circulation. They think that Europe has seen a number of slightly more infectious versions similar to the Kent variant but lack of monitoring means we'll never know. It's been impossible to convince European governments to invest in monitoring as the UK has done, many prefer the approach of not knowing because they can't be targeted for travel bans that way.
Edit: the point being that they backed the government stance on jabbing as many people as possible because it would help to reduce the number of events and therefore chances of a serious mutation. They think the government scientists are also using this same modelling for justification.
Really useful insider info. Thankyou. Far better than the BBC or any newspaper, to be frank
To be honest I could see Sheffield Utd now bashing their way to another 5 or 6 narrow victories. Will it be enough? Probably not, but I’d give them a better chance than either West Brom or Fulham.
"The Oxford coronavirus vaccine - which is set to be manufactured at Keele following an agreement between Cobra Biologics and AstraZeneca UK - shows a strong immune response in adults in their 60s and 70s, raising hopes that it can protect age groups most at risk from the virus."
Fake news. Some chap in Germany heard from a mate down the pub it was shit, so that’s why the Germans want loads of it, or something.
Actually very good news, but not unexpected. Matches the phase II data on antibody production.
This subject was raised repeatedly on here during the demolition of the 8% story the other evening. It's discussed in the Lancet article on the phase III trials.
The issue with the trials for the Oxford vaccine does not appear to be that it is wholly ineffective in the old, but rather that there were insufficient older people included in the trials to arrive at a proper statistical conclusion as to *exactly* how effective the vaccine was in the over 55s.
One has to assume that the MHRA, when they reviewed the available evidence, concluded that the vaccine was highly likely to be good enough, despite this paucity of data, and decided to roll with it. To the layman, that seems logical: if the immune response seen in the older recipients was about as strong as that seen in the younger ones then, even if the vaccine is slightly less effective in older people, it doesn't seem plausible that any drop-off in performance would occur suddenly and catastrophically just because someone has recently received some 55th (or 65th, or 75th) birthday cards.
Quite. I didn't want to post about this as I am no scientist but even with my GCSE in Chemistry (an 'A' I'll have you know) it seemed quite incredible that a vaccine with a 70% success rate (or 90% - that's one of the problems) would have its efficacy plummit off a cliff at an arbitrary age. A gradual decline, sure, I get that. But not a compound that suddenly goes on strike the day its host becomes eligible for a bus pass.
For my part I have a biology degree, albeit that I graduated 23 years ago and never used it so it hardly counts!
But anyway, whilst I obviously can't be completely sure that this decision won't go pear-shaped, logic suggests that this is unlikely. The same applies to the decision to delay the Pfizer booster jabs as well: the regulator clearly seems to consider it improbable that extending from three weeks to twelve will render the initial shot useless, and that's good enough for me. The overall plan is obviously to maximise the number of people who receive some protection from Covid, rather than providing a gold standard service for a smaller group of very old people, at the expense of those slightly lower down the priority list having to wait months for any at all. A bit less advantageous for the ancient, better for society collectively. This seems appropriate given the circumstances.
Yes. It's a trade off. Give away some protection for some individuals in return for the greater macro benefit of double the number of people with some protection. It's a panic measure but I think it's justified.
Trade off? Yes. Panic measure? No. Seems considered and sensible.
I guess if, as a country, you're basically disease free and very isolated, which I'd suggest applies to Taiwan, New Zealand, a few small island states and nobody else, then you might feel you can be pedestrian and take plenty of time to follow manufacturer's recommendations to the letter. For the rest of the world, the overriding priority is to stamp on the disease as quickly and as hard as possible. Stem mass casualties and reduce the chance of it mutating into something nastier.
Does anyone think the EU would have helped the UK had supplies of vaccine all been.manufactured across the Channel and not in theUK?
The Pfizer vaccine is manufactured in Belgium and we even agreed special arrangements with the Belgian government in case of no deal brexit to ensure there wouldn't be any issues with importing it.
That's not the issue, if the EU had signed a contract that said 25% of UK manufacturing would go into their reserve from day one then that's what they would be due. AZ is a private company after all. However, due to commitments that AZ made to the UK government and UK government subsidies for manufacturing months earlier that wasn't done.
The EU, uniquely in the developed world, took a route of no subsidies and this is the result, they don't have favourable delivery contracts. In fact they went down the price bargaining route and now they're wondering if they're behind the countries that didn't haggle (the UK) or paid extra (Israel) in the queue.
Does anyone think the EU would have helped the UK had supplies of vaccine all been.manufactured across the Channel and not in theUK?
That's unfair on them. The Pfizer vaccine is, of course, made across the Channel and that's been delivered in a satisfactory fashion. So far, anyway.
But if you're asking what would happen if the situation were precisely reversed, and we were the production laggards faced with teething problems, then one has to assume that they'd have said "Tough, our people come first." Set to a background symphony of tutting and finger wagging about the stupidity of Brexit, of course.
Does anyone think the EU would have helped the UK had supplies of vaccine all been.manufactured across the Channel and not in theUK?
No. They would have tried to humiliate us. I cannot understand how any sane Briton can still support membership of this anti-democratic cabal of rancidly failed, 3rd division politicians who all-forge-their-tax-returns.
The vaccine row has finally exposed them. If something like this happens again, will EU member states happily yield control to Brussels? I doubt it.
Ironically, this may be the final disaster - lethally dangerous - which provokes EU real reform, Just after we leave.
Last note on the meeting, on mutations they kept coming back to the same point over and over again, the fewer infections there are, the fewer infected people there are, the less virus there is in bloodstreams, the less chance there is of a serious mutation. They explained to me in terms of maths which I think a lot of people will find helpful here:
A virus has a 1 in 1m chance of mutating during the replication process in a cell. In a country if you have 1m people infected you give the virus a huge chance of mutating everyday and it leads to a high number of individual mutations that can eventually lead to a random chance that causes vaccine resistance. If in the same country only 100 people are infected there is almost no opportunity for the virus to mutate as it can only do so during replication process.
They say that the virus has mutated seriously in the UK, SA, Brazil, California, Belgium and Spain isn't a surprise because all of these countries have got a lot of virus in circulation. They think that Europe has seen a number of slightly more infectious versions similar to the Kent variant but lack of monitoring means we'll never know. It's been impossible to convince European governments to invest in monitoring as the UK has done, many prefer the approach of not knowing because they can't be targeted for travel bans that way.
Edit: the point being that they backed the government stance on jabbing as many people as possible because it would help to reduce the number of events and therefore chances of a serious mutation. They think the government scientists are also using this same modelling for justification.
They think that Europe has seen a number of slightly more infectious versions similar to the Kent variant but lack of monitoring means we'll never know.
Which would explain why much of Europe has had unexplained surges in infections since the autumn.
They also say they will be able to meet delivery timetables.
And I don't think they'd be saying that, if they were going to report that the vaccine didn't work.
This could be a game changer if it's got 80-90% efficacy.
Easy to distribute, easy to manufacture, single dose; yes, it literally changes everything.
We could have 75% of population vaccinated by the middle of March.
30m doses plus whatever we have from AZ, Pfizer and Moderna. I think we're due our first deliveries of it from mid March. There's going to be another row about it because it's another vaccine where we got in first and is manufactured in the EU, but a big percentage will be UK supply chain.
Does anyone think the EU would have helped the UK had supplies of vaccine all been.manufactured across the Channel and not in theUK?
That's unfair on them. The Pfizer vaccine is, of course, made across the Channel and that's been delivered in a satisfactory fashion. So far, anyway.
But if you're asking what would happen if the situation were precisely reversed, and we were the production laggards faced with teething problems, then one has to assume that they'd have said "Tough, our people come first." Set to a background symphony of tutting and finger wagging about the stupidity of Brexit, of course.
And I’m sure the UK would have taken that with the philosophical equanimity which has characterised the national demeanour for years. Well, maybe one or two tabloid headlines involving gunboats..
Last note on the meeting, on mutations they kept coming back to the same point over and over again, the fewer infections there are, the fewer infected people there are, the less virus there is in bloodstreams, the less chance there is of a serious mutation. They explained to me in terms of maths which I think a lot of people will find helpful here:
A virus has a 1 in 1m chance of mutating during the replication process in a cell. In a country if you have 1m people infected you give the virus a huge chance of mutating everyday and it leads to a high number of individual mutations that can eventually lead to a random chance that causes vaccine resistance. If in the same country only 100 people are infected there is almost no opportunity for the virus to mutate as it can only do so during replication process.
They say that the virus has mutated seriously in the UK, SA, Brazil, California, Belgium and Spain isn't a surprise because all of these countries have got a lot of virus in circulation. They think that Europe has seen a number of slightly more infectious versions similar to the Kent variant but lack of monitoring means we'll never know. It's been impossible to convince European governments to invest in monitoring as the UK has done, many prefer the approach of not knowing because they can't be targeted for travel bans that way.
Edit: the point being that they backed the government stance on jabbing as many people as possible because it would help to reduce the number of events and therefore chances of a serious mutation. They think the government scientists are also using this same modelling for justification.
Really useful insider info. Thankyou. Far better than the BBC or any newspaper, to be frank
A suspicious person might see a subtle implication that as the joint procurement was set up to avoid vaccine nationalism, it is the UK's fault that the EU has made accusations at all, since if we were part of it they would not need to make any accusations.
Thanks for the responses to my question. As a remainder as I thought it better fir our youth going forward,my heart is rapidly hardening against the EU members with everything they are doing that damages us. Especially the French.
Thanks for the responses to my question. As a remainder as I thought it better fir our youth going forward,my heart is rapidly hardening against the EU members with everything they are doing that damages us. Especially the French.
Sorry to hear that you’re a remainder, hope things look up.
They also say they will be able to meet delivery timetables.
And I don't think they'd be saying that, if they were going to report that the vaccine didn't work.
This could be a game changer if it's got 80-90% efficacy.
Easy to distribute, easy to manufacture, single dose; yes, it literally changes everything.
We could have 75% of population vaccinated by the middle of March.
30m doses plus whatever we have from AZ, Pfizer and Moderna. I think we're due our first deliveries of it from mid March. There's going to be another row about it because it's another vaccine where we got in first and is manufactured in the EU, but a big percentage will be UK supply chain.
It will probably be approved by the mhra in time for us to use in March, while the ema will take ages, and the eu will complain that we are stealing their vaccines again, even though ema hasn’t yet approved it. Just like AZ...
A suspicious person might see a subtle implication that as the joint procurement was set up to avoid vaccine nationalism, it is the UK's fault that the EU has made accusations at all, since if we were part of it they would not need to make any accusations.
Not sure if it was covered earlier but - any reason why yesterday's vaccine stats (reported today) are disappointing at 312k? Lower than the 350k last Tuesday.
A suspicious person might see a subtle implication that as the joint procurement was set up to avoid vaccine nationalism, it is the UK's fault that the EU has made accusations at all, since if we were part of it they would not need to make any accusations.
Is there any proof he does want to sideline him? Probably angry about losing the Senate, and he felt willing to finally admit the election fraud lies were not true, but if he sees no benefit to sidelining, well, that would be that.
Not sure if it was covered earlier but - any reason why yesterday's vaccine stats (reported today) are disappointing at 312k? Lower than the 350k last Tuesday.
Supply issues this week and next week, could be worse if the EU start playing stupid games over exports.
Not sure if it was covered earlier but - any reason why yesterday's vaccine stats (reported today) are disappointing at 312k? Lower than the 350k last Tuesday.
Not sure if it was covered earlier but - any reason why yesterday's vaccine stats (reported today) are disappointing at 312k? Lower than the 350k last Tuesday.
Supply issues this week and next week, could be worse if the EU start playing stupid games over exports.
Do we have any sense of what proportion of current supply is Pfizer and what proportion is AZ? I thought the (UK) supply issues only affected Pfizer.
Last note on the meeting, on mutations they kept coming back to the same point over and over again, the fewer infections there are, the fewer infected people there are, the less virus there is in bloodstreams, the less chance there is of a serious mutation. They explained to me in terms of maths which I think a lot of people will find helpful here:
A virus has a 1 in 1m chance of mutating during the replication process in a cell. In a country if you have 1m people infected you give the virus a huge chance of mutating everyday and it leads to a high number of individual mutations that can eventually lead to a random chance that causes vaccine resistance. If in the same country only 100 people are infected there is almost no opportunity for the virus to mutate as it can only do so during replication process.
They say that the virus has mutated seriously in the UK, SA, Brazil, California, Belgium and Spain isn't a surprise because all of these countries have got a lot of virus in circulation. They think that Europe has seen a number of slightly more infectious versions similar to the Kent variant but lack of monitoring means we'll never know. It's been impossible to convince European governments to invest in monitoring as the UK has done, many prefer the approach of not knowing because they can't be targeted for travel bans that way.
Edit: the point being that they backed the government stance on jabbing as many people as possible because it would help to reduce the number of events and therefore chances of a serious mutation. They think the government scientists are also using this same modelling for justification.
They think that Europe has seen a number of slightly more infectious versions similar to the Kent variant but lack of monitoring means we'll never know.
Which would explain why much of Europe has had unexplained surges in infections since the autumn.
Unfortunately I can't trace the article through a search, but I distinctly remember reading a few weeks ago on the BBC website about the UK's genomic sequencing capabilities. They'd spoken to the chap in charge of the programme in Wales (not the entire UK, I emphasise, but the Welsh NHS alone) who related that his organisation had sequenced more Covid genomes in a week than the whole of France had managed since the start of the pandemic, or at any rate some similar such astonishing statistic.
For most of continental Europe (Denmark being one of the few exceptions IIRC) it's not that they don't want to see these problems. Or, at least, it's not merely that they don't want to see them. It's that they're incapable of seeing them. They haven't invested in the correct eyes, so to speak. They're blind.
A suspicious person might see a subtle implication that as the joint procurement was set up to avoid vaccine nationalism, it is the UK's fault that the EU has made accusations at all, since if we were part of it they would not need to make any accusations.
Its the EU's fault for late ordering.
They touted a Novavax deal in mid December, 6 weeks later signing was "imminent". 16 days later, they're still to sign.
A suspicious person might see a subtle implication that as the joint procurement was set up to avoid vaccine nationalism, it is the UK's fault that the EU has made accusations at all, since if we were part of it they would not need to make any accusations.
Except, of course, that several EU nations (quite sensibly, given the incompetence at Brussels) have gone quietly round the back of the Commission bikesheds, and bought their own personal vaccine supplies, as well. eg Germany, France, Hungary.
So such an implication is idiotic as well as inherently biased.
Does anyone think the EU would have helped the UK had supplies of vaccine all been.manufactured across the Channel and not in theUK?
However, due to commitments that AZ made to the UK government and UK government subsidies for manufacturing months earlier that wasn't done.
Doesn't the UK's contract give us the first 100million doses from the UK supply?
Yes, as part of the development and manufacturing subsidies that were agreed for them to onshore the process and supply chain. It's why the EU are pissing into the wind.
A lot of places really do need more supplies, and badly. It's no wonder they are so upset by reduced deliveries (not that they have responded in a grown up way). Only good news is I don't think cases are going up everywhere, certainly not like in Spain, but there's a lot of pain to come for everyone.
My views on the gamble of the extended interval for the Pfizer is widely shared, and indeed the policy of the WHO, USA, Israel, and elsewhere. As I have repeatedly said, it may well be a successful gamble, but it is a gamble. There has been no trial of that as a treatment protocol.
I do have some sympathy with your evident blindspot on what you call the 'gamble' of the extended interval. Doctors are intensively and rightly trained to give the best treatment or protection to the patient in front of them. And, yes, considering a patient in front of you about to receive a vaccine, all your training prompts you to follow the letter of the manufacturer's recommendation, which is based on properly-conducted clinical trials.
The trouble is that, in this unusual circumstance, it's not just about the patient in front of you, it's also about her husband or sister or cousin who is going to get absolutely certain zero protection in exchange for the off-chance that the patient in front of you gets a (probably marginal) higher protection. Quite how you manage to do the mental gymnastics of calling the delayed second dose a 'gamble', as an insult, whilst totally ignoring the gamble of leaving someone else completely unprotected, is an exercise for the reader.
Am I correct in thinking that the next likely vaccine candidates are J&J - which we ordered ahead of the EU, and Novavax, which the EU have not ordered at all (UK 60 million doses)?
That sounds about right. I had a look a little earlier to see what I could learn about Novavax and Valneva, as I thought that they might be the next two up after J&J, which looks very promising but might be problematic in the current environment as it's also produced on the continent.
Valneva is a long-term project (hopefully we'll have finished vaccinating all adults before they get as far as coming on stream,) but findings for the Novavax phase III trial ought apparently to be reported at some point during this quarter.
I believe Robert said Novavax were aiming to provide their data by the end of this month, which is within the next 4 days.
Yeah the presentation I saw about it last week said their trial was almost ready to report, within a week or two.
Novavax started their UK Phase 3 trial in September and had all their volunteers signed up by end of November. The only good thing about the UK second wave is that it should have accelerated that trial - although whether by enough to allow results by month end? Also we should have a good idea if it works against the Kent Covid variant. Lets hope they had a good number of over 65s in their trial though...
Does anyone know how good to go their manufacturing system is?
Does anyone think the EU would have helped the UK had supplies of vaccine all been.manufactured across the Channel and not in theUK?
That's unfair on them. The Pfizer vaccine is, of course, made across the Channel and that's been delivered in a satisfactory fashion. So far, anyway.
But if you're asking what would happen if the situation were precisely reversed, and we were the production laggards faced with teething problems, then one has to assume that they'd have said "Tough, our people come first." Set to a background symphony of tutting and finger wagging about the stupidity of Brexit, of course.
And I’m sure the UK would have taken that with the philosophical equanimity which has characterised the national demeanour for years. Well, maybe one or two tabloid headlines involving gunboats..
That the EU is responding in precisely the way would have in their situation, to the point where the UK gov has been able to play the high minded lets not escalate things tone instead of the other way round, is pretty damning. When you're response is the sort of thing you'd expect from Boris Johnson rallying his troops, that's not a good sign.
Not sure if it was covered earlier but - any reason why yesterday's vaccine stats (reported today) are disappointing at 312k? Lower than the 350k last Tuesday.
Supply issues this week and next week, could be worse if the EU start playing stupid games over exports.
Do we have any sense of what proportion of current supply is Pfizer and what proportion is AZ? I thought the (UK) supply issues only affected Pfizer.
A couple of weeks ago it waa reported we had 5m Pfizer does in the country and 20 million AZN...but Pfizer is all ready to go in arms and AZN is slowly being QAed / fill and finish.
Since then slow delivery of new Pfizer doses does to plant shut down for upgrades. So given rate of jabbing, I presume we must be running low on Pfizer now.
Given we only got 2m AZN last week rather than the promised 4m, I think there is some sort of bottleneck with AZN production. And this is all causing supply issues which means we aren't at doing 500k/day that we have capacity for.
My views on the gamble of the extended interval for the Pfizer is widely shared, and indeed the policy of the WHO, USA, Israel, and elsewhere. As I have repeatedly said, it may well be a successful gamble, but it is a gamble. There has been no trial of that as a treatment protocol.
I do have some sympathy with your evident blindspot on what you call the 'gamble' of the extended interval. Doctors are intensively and rightly trained to give the best treatment or protection to the patient in front of them. And, yes, considering a patient in front of you about to receive a vaccine, all your training prompts you to follow the letter of the manufacturer's recommendation, which is based on properly-conducted clinical trials.
The trouble is that, in this unusual circumstance, it's not just about the patient in front of you, it's also about her husband or sister or cousin who is going to get absolutely certain zero protection in exchange for the off-chance that the patient in front of you gets a (probably marginal) higher protection. Quite how you manage to do the mental gymnastics of calling the delayed second dose a 'gamble', as an insult, whilst totally ignoring the gamble of leaving someone else completely unprotected, is an exercise for the reader.
After speaking to the expert today on this subject I'm more convinced that before that this is the correct strategy. They were very convincing on the subject of mutations and potential events. Even partial immunity will reduce the number of events where we could expect serious mutations to occur (prolonged infection) meaning a significantly reduced chance of having any.
Again, this person is a scientist so doesn't have the same ethical issues over protecting the wider country vs giving individual patients the best protection (which they think is why the BMA and doctors are so exercised by it, they have ethical issues with not giving their patients the best available protection).
I think the rapid vaccine roll out is the one thing keeping the lid on public unrest in the UK. We have a terrible death rate, a nearly-crushed NHS, and significant daily cases (albeit, finally, falling). The economy is cratered, many are suffering, impoverishment beckons for the nation.
However, we have this one precious thing. Hope. Provided by the excellent vaccine programme. And hope is worth more than almost anything. We see a way out, so we endure, and grit our teeth. We've had a shit plague, compared to most countries, but spring is not far away.
Now imagine Britain WITHOUT a massive, successful vaccine programme.
Wow.
It is no wonder there have been huge riots in Holland. Will Spain avoid the same? France? Madame Le Pen could win at this rate. Her victory will be the French riot, the storming of the Elysee a la QAnon. That 52:48 French prez elex poll is a dire augury.
A suspicious person might see a subtle implication that as the joint procurement was set up to avoid vaccine nationalism, it is the UK's fault that the EU has made accusations at all, since if we were part of it they would not need to make any accusations.
I would tell that suspicious person to do one.
Well I'll not be coy then - he says the procurement programme was designed to avoid this sort of thing, that being a situation where the EU is accusing the UK of stealing its vaccines. It's a pretty straight line to therefore thinking that if we had been part of the EU scheme, the accusations would not have occured. From someone who has been manipulating data to make points he wants to make, I'm inclined to be suspicious of his motivations. As has been shown today, one can be very pro-EU without needing to find other culprits for their reaction.
I think the rapid vaccine roll out is the one thing keeping the lid on public unrest in the UK. We have a terrible death rate, a nearly-crushed NHS, and significant daily cases (albeit, finally, falling). The economy is cratered, many are suffering, impoverishment beckons for the nation.
However, we have this one precious thing. Hope. Provided by the excellent vaccine programme. And hope is worth more than almost anything. We see a way out, so we endure, and grit our teeth. We've had a shit plague, compared to most countries, but spring is not far away.
Now imagine Britain WITHOUT a massive, successful vaccine programme.
Wow.
It is no wonder there have been huge riots in Holland. Will Spain avoid the same? France? Madame Le Pen could win at this rate. Her victory will be the French riot, the storming of the Elysee a la QAnon. That 52:48 French prez elex poll is a dire augury.
Good job for Macron (and for Europe - including us) that the election is not until 2022.
The worrying thing is that I don't think Macron has any answers. He's not the French Thatcher after all.
Well I think its also a matter of the French people won't accept the sort of overhaul that Thatcher would have tried to impose. i mean Macron proposes some pretty minor labour reforms and the whole country goes on strike.
Does anyone think the EU would have helped the UK had supplies of vaccine all been.manufactured across the Channel and not in theUK?
That's unfair on them. The Pfizer vaccine is, of course, made across the Channel and that's been delivered in a satisfactory fashion. So far, anyway.
But if you're asking what would happen if the situation were precisely reversed, and we were the production laggards faced with teething problems, then one has to assume that they'd have said "Tough, our people come first." Set to a background symphony of tutting and finger wagging about the stupidity of Brexit, of course.
And I’m sure the UK would have taken that with the philosophical equanimity which has characterised the national demeanour for years. Well, maybe one or two tabloid headlines involving gunboats..
That the EU is responding in precisely the way would have in their situation, to the point where the UK gov has been able to play the high minded lets not escalate things tone instead of the other way round, is pretty damning. When you're response is the sort of thing you'd expect from Boris Johnson rallying his troops, that's not a good sign.
The EU's response, the last couple of days, has been way worse than some Boris Johnsonian harrumphing and Latinising. The closest UK analogy is Farage.
Not sure if it was covered earlier but - any reason why yesterday's vaccine stats (reported today) are disappointing at 312k? Lower than the 350k last Tuesday.
Supply issues this week and next week, could be worse if the EU start playing stupid games over exports.
Do we have any sense of what proportion of current supply is Pfizer and what proportion is AZ? I thought the (UK) supply issues only affected Pfizer.
Best guess is that AZ is outstripping Pfizer supply
I think the rapid vaccine roll out is the one thing keeping the lid on public unrest in the UK. We have a terrible death rate, a nearly-crushed NHS, and significant daily cases (albeit, finally, falling). The economy is cratered, many are suffering, impoverishment beckons for the nation.
However, we have this one precious thing. Hope. Provided by the excellent vaccine programme. And hope is worth more than almost anything. We see a way out, so we endure, and grit our teeth. We've had a shit plague, compared to most countries, but spring is not far away.
Now imagine Britain WITHOUT a massive, successful vaccine programme.
Wow.
It is no wonder there have been huge riots in Holland. Will Spain avoid the same? France? Madame Le Pen could win at this rate. Her victory will be the French riot, the storming of the Elysee a la QAnon. That 52:48 French prez elex poll is a dire augury.
Yes, having that light at the end of the tunnel is a huge deal for my mental state and for a lot of others I know. I now have an end date to this horrible half existence we've all been forced into, it's not close for someone my age but it's there and I can see it on the horizon.
In Europe it must be awful, there's a neverending bad news cycle on vaccines whether it's supply or anti-vaxxers. There's just no light at the end of the tunnel for anyone under the age of 70.
Yes, what are these 'senior industry sources' who told them this 'last night'? The strength of the UK vaccine portfolio (at least in terms of orders) has been well reported for months, I think I saw in the FT way back last year.
Comments
The UK has spent about £29 per person to build up vaccine manufacturing and procurement. The EU have spent about £4 per person doing so. £25 per person is the difference, means we spent about 7x the amount they did and have got our manufacturing working . . . but what is £25 per person when it comes to the cost of the pandemic?
Its chicken feed compared to the pandemic costs. The pandemic is costing the country about £6bn a week - the whole cost of the vaccine priming has cost the UK about 2 days worth of pandemic costs. Two days, to get a working vaccine.
But anyway, whilst I obviously can't be completely sure that this decision won't go pear-shaped, logic suggests that this is unlikely. The same applies to the decision to delay the Pfizer booster jabs as well: the regulator clearly seems to consider it improbable that extending from three weeks to twelve will render the initial shot useless, and that's good enough for me. The overall plan is obviously to maximise the number of people who receive some protection from Covid, rather than providing a gold standard service for a smaller group of very old people, at the expense of those slightly lower down the priority list having to wait months for any at all. A bit less advantageous for the ancient, better for society collectively. This seems appropriate given the circumstances.
https://twitter.com/MCFCRxlf/status/1354532431995543556
I'm in favour of mouthy backbenchers and MPs on the fruitier side of politics. That's why 'in general' it is better not to take any action against them. But in this particular context the benefits of an MP speaking his mind with the weight of the Tory Whip and graced with a safe seat for life even though he causes difficulty with his behaviour and comments, may be outweighed in these circumstances because of the very real danger than a man with such weight and security can do, as there is no other way of constraining him.
And we may well need people to speak out with regard to conspiracies, in fact we definitely do. But if someone were to routinely see conspiracies which do not exist, they would in fact undermine the uncovery of actual conspiracies. He sees at least one, I don't know if that is a trend, but it's not a good sign.
Christopher Hitchens got that swipe from George Galloway in the US Senate.
Galloway v Hitchens is one of those contests where you wish both could have lost.
A virus has a 1 in 1m chance of mutating during the replication process in a cell. In a country if you have 1m people infected you give the virus a huge chance of mutating everyday and it leads to a high number of individual mutations that can eventually lead to a random chance that causes vaccine resistance. If in the same country only 100 people are infected there is almost no opportunity for the virus to mutate as it can only do so during replication process.
They say that the virus has mutated seriously in the UK, SA, Brazil, California, Belgium and Spain isn't a surprise because all of these countries have got a lot of virus in circulation. They think that Europe has seen a number of slightly more infectious versions similar to the Kent variant but lack of monitoring means we'll never know. It's been impossible to convince European governments to invest in monitoring as the UK has done, many prefer the approach of not knowing because they can't be targeted for travel bans that way.
Edit: the point being that they backed the government stance on jabbing as many people as possible because it would help to reduce the number of events and therefore chances of a serious mutation. They think the government scientists are also using this same modelling for justification.
Despicably low and cynical politicking from the Labour Party - I am very impressed the Union isn't stooping so low. Well done them, Starmer should be ashamed of himself but he won't be.
At Old Trafford.
https://twitter.com/PAdugout/status/1354552140992294912
And I don't think they'd be saying that, if they were going to report that the vaccine didn't work.
Someone will be left "holding the baby" when the price goes back down 95%, and it won't be pretty.
I guess if, as a country, you're basically disease free and very isolated, which I'd suggest applies to Taiwan, New Zealand, a few small island states and nobody else, then you might feel you can be pedestrian and take plenty of time to follow manufacturer's recommendations to the letter. For the rest of the world, the overriding priority is to stamp on the disease as quickly and as hard as possible. Stem mass casualties and reduce the chance of it mutating into something nastier.
We could have 75% of population vaccinated by the middle of March.
https://twitter.com/MacaesBruno/status/1354439836380311559?s=20
That's not the issue, if the EU had signed a contract that said 25% of UK manufacturing would go into their reserve from day one then that's what they would be due. AZ is a private company after all. However, due to commitments that AZ made to the UK government and UK government subsidies for manufacturing months earlier that wasn't done.
The EU, uniquely in the developed world, took a route of no subsidies and this is the result, they don't have favourable delivery contracts. In fact they went down the price bargaining route and now they're wondering if they're behind the countries that didn't haggle (the UK) or paid extra (Israel) in the queue.
But if you're asking what would happen if the situation were precisely reversed, and we were the production laggards faced with teething problems, then one has to assume that they'd have said "Tough, our people come first." Set to a background symphony of tutting and finger wagging about the stupidity of Brexit, of course.
The vaccine row has finally exposed them. If something like this happens again, will EU member states happily yield control to Brussels? I doubt it.
Ironically, this may be the final disaster - lethally dangerous - which provokes EU real reform, Just after we leave.
Tho, I wouldn't bet on it.
Which would explain why much of Europe has had unexplained surges in infections since the autumn.
https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1354551394360037381?s=20
https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1354542219697524739?s=19
That must be the single-most eurosceptic headline EVER seen in the Independent.
The EU has really shat the bed. Of course, they may think it is our bed, and we have to now lie in it, but still, they shat in a bed.
Its likely to go down 100% at some point.
That's a he kind of thing ghat makes people look at guillotines.
Normally service will resume in a week or two and back to how bad Brexit is.
They have managed to 'Ratner' their brand
For most of continental Europe (Denmark being one of the few exceptions IIRC) it's not that they don't want to see these problems. Or, at least, it's not merely that they don't want to see them. It's that they're incapable of seeing them. They haven't invested in the correct eyes, so to speak. They're blind.
So such an implication is idiotic as well as inherently biased.
The trouble is that, in this unusual circumstance, it's not just about the patient in front of you, it's also about her husband or sister or cousin who is going to get absolutely certain zero protection in exchange for the off-chance that the patient in front of you gets a (probably marginal) higher protection. Quite how you manage to do the mental gymnastics of calling the delayed second dose a 'gamble', as an insult, whilst totally ignoring the gamble of leaving someone else completely unprotected, is an exercise for the reader.
Does anyone know how good to go their manufacturing system is?
Since then slow delivery of new Pfizer doses does to plant shut down for upgrades. So given rate of jabbing, I presume we must be running low on Pfizer now.
Given we only got 2m AZN last week rather than the promised 4m, I think there is some sort of bottleneck with AZN production. And this is all causing supply issues which means we aren't at doing 500k/day that we have capacity for.
Again, this person is a scientist so doesn't have the same ethical issues over protecting the wider country vs giving individual patients the best protection (which they think is why the BMA and doctors are so exercised by it, they have ethical issues with not giving their patients the best available protection).
I think the rapid vaccine roll out is the one thing keeping the lid on public unrest in the UK. We have a terrible death rate, a nearly-crushed NHS, and significant daily cases (albeit, finally, falling). The economy is cratered, many are suffering, impoverishment beckons for the nation.
However, we have this one precious thing. Hope. Provided by the excellent vaccine programme. And hope is worth more than almost anything. We see a way out, so we endure, and grit our teeth. We've had a shit plague, compared to most countries, but spring is not far away.
Now imagine Britain WITHOUT a massive, successful vaccine programme.
Wow.
It is no wonder there have been huge riots in Holland. Will Spain avoid the same? France? Madame Le Pen could win at this rate. Her victory will be the French riot, the storming of the Elysee a la QAnon. That 52:48 French prez elex poll is a dire augury.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1354557273050329088?s=19
In Europe it must be awful, there's a neverending bad news cycle on vaccines whether it's supply or anti-vaxxers. There's just no light at the end of the tunnel for anyone under the age of 70.