Covid-19 vaccine thread

[Free]

Good news if this true, but even if, it'll be another lost summer for the most part.

 

[Rose Karuna]

I'm getting mine today at 2:15 they told me to be an hour early but my husband said he waited in line 3 hours in his car. I'll just take my kindle and make sure I have plenty of gas in the car.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

FT article (paywalled) UK vaccine rollout success built on NHS determination and military precision

Global leadership is an unaccustomed status for a country with one of the highest rates of excess deaths in western Europe. Multiple missteps, such as the government’s failure to deliver on a “world beating” test and trace system, have engendered cynicism about its handling of the pandemic
[...]
The Financial Times has spoken to more than a dozen people at the heart of the programme to discover the key decisions that were taken and examine whether the right lessons were learned from a litany of earlier failures.

Relying on the NHS to coordinate the vaccination programme and the Army to coordinate logistics, it seems, and also taking the (at the time, contentious) decision to delay the second dose until up to twelve weeks after the first one. The programme has, however, not been without problems, as the article describes.

Ends with a quote from Tony Blair

Blair said the UK must now come to terms with the idea of vaccine distribution as a constant and recurring challenge with new variants threatening to defeat the first generation of jabs. “You have got to stop thinking about this as a crisis, with a beginning and an end, and look at it as a new state of the world.”

 

[Rose Karuna]

Arms a little sore today but outside of that, no problems with the vaccine. I go back for my second dose first week of March.

They did seem a little better organized yesterday but our Governor DeSatan has basically ordered at threat of firing, the FDOH, to ONLY give vaccines to people 65 and older regardless of other circumstances and that's a real problem for so many in Florida.

People under 65 with issues are told to get their vaccine at hospitals. The problem with that? DeSatan hasn't sent ANY vaccine to hospitals here. Hence, the FDOH people vaccinating yesterday spent a lot of time having to turn people in line away because on their stupid web site, it specifically states that people with a doctors note under 65 can get a vaccine.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Arms a little sore today but outside of that, no problems with the vaccine. I go back for my second dose first week of March.

They did seem a little better organized yesterday but our Governor DeSatan has basically ordered at threat of firing, the FDOH, to ONLY give vaccines to people 65 and older regardless of other circumstances and that's a real problem for so many in Florida.

People under 65 with issues are told to get their vaccine at hospitals. The problem with that? DeSatan hasn't sent ANY vaccine to hospitals here. Hence, the FDOH people vaccinating yesterday spent a lot of time having to turn people in line away because on their stupid web site, it specifically states that people with a doctors note under 65 can get a vaccine.

So, let's punish people with high risk conditions, kill us off, and try to keep his voters alive.
Assholes, even Kemp isn't as bad

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Just got back from my first shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which all went remarkably smoothly, with no waiting at all -- the vaccination centre was 5 minutes away by car (the Royal Logistics Corps are in charge of coordinating the programme, and apparently one of their goals was to make sure no one has to travel more than a few miles for their shot).

Straight in, fill out a short form, quick chat with the nurse to confirm I'm not unwell and have no allergies and then she gave me the shot and I was ushered into a little recovery area with comfy chairs, where I waited for 10 minutes, and then they showed me out.

Door to door in less than an hour.

Yay NHS!

Vaccination priorities over here are strictly by age and medical condition, apart from front-line medical staff, which is said to be the way both to save most lives and to relieve pressure on hospitals and ICU beds.

Quite apart from lives potentially saved, it has the advantage of being easy to understand and generally accepted as fair.

COVID-19 vaccination programme

Documents relating to the new coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination programme.

www.gov.uk

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

EU's von der Leyen admits vaccine rollout shortcomings

Covid: EU's von der Leyen admits vaccine rollout shortcomings

Wow, she finally admitted a failure! That's really a change with that woman. Her normal mode of operation was to move on to the next position when her errors became known enough.

But there's not much she can go from where she's now, so she needs to change her ways, which must be really hard for her: taking the blame for the errors she made by herself.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Lifelong immunity hope for Covid-19 vaccine

Trials of coronavirus vaccines for children as young as five are set to begin within days, laying the groundwork for a childhood immunisation programme that co

www.thetimes.co.uk

Evernote link because paywall

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Breaking news: the WHO's president Tedros announced that still all theories about the origin of the COVID19 strain are being investigated.

This includes the theory that the virus was being created in the virus lab in Wuhan, and somehow escaped into the wild. The leader of the investigation group with China on the other hand, Peter Ben Embarek, ruled out that possibility last Tuesday arguing that researchers would recognize their work and, if so, public it immediately. And no lab scientist he talked to knew that strain before he told as well.

On the other hand the joint investigation team did not get access to all requested data by the Chinese authorities, who would have guessed that.

So China must be fuming right now... I like!

COVID-19: WHO backtracks on dismissing Wuhan lab theory as coronavirus probe continues

The WHO's director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says "all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and study".

news.sky.com

 

[Arkady Arkright]

So China must be fuming right now... I like!

Your bias is showing...

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I don't trust the Chinese Communist Party, which is ruling the PRC. If that is bias, so be it.

Fact is that there's an advanced lab in Wuhan with the focus on virus research, that they've researched a lot on corona viruses, experimented with them and changed them. The papers are well known and published, first it was a joint American-Chinese research, later Chinese only.

I am also sure about that the Chinese government is only as transparent as it wants to be, a trait which most governments share by the way, but with the Chinese government among the more shady ones.

So the possibility of the strain being somehow connected with the Wuhan lab should not be ruled out completely, because the building blocks are all there.

 

[Arkady Arkright]

So the possibility of the strain being somehow connected with the Wuhan lab should not be ruled out completely.

I'm not arguing with that, just suggesting that you're declaring them guilty before any evidence has actually appeared.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Again wrong, I only declared that I am very happy about that the WHO is researching that option again.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I don't trust the Chinese Communist Party, which is ruling the PRC. If that is bias, so be it.

Fact is that there's an advanced lab in Wuhan with the focus on virus research, that they've researched a lot on corona viruses, experimented with them and changed them. The papers are well known and published, first it was a joint American-Chinese research, later Chinese only.

I am also sure about that the Chinese government is only as transparent as it wants to be, a trait which most governments share by the way, but with the Chinese government among the more shady ones.

So the possibility of the strain being somehow connected with the Wuhan lab should not be ruled out completely, because the building blocks are all there.

Similarly, though, it's probably impossible completely to rule out Vladimir Putin's theory that the poisonings in Salisbury might have been connected in some way with Porton Down, and I'm pretty sure the British government wouldn't be a model of transparency had Porton Down been somehow involved, but that doesn't mean there's necessarily anything in the idea.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

This is somewhat alarming

Vaccine hesitancy in some health workers in England 'may undermine rollout'

Vaccination rates lowest among BAME staff, under-30s and those in the most deprived areas, analysis finds

www.theguardian.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Soen Eber]

I don't trust the Chinese Communist Party, which is ruling the PRC. If that is bias, so be it.

...

So the possibility of the strain being somehow connected with the Wuhan lab should not be ruled out completely, because the building blocks are all there.

It would make sense that China would heavily research Covid strains because they've already had some near-disasterous encounters with them in the last 30 years.

If they were trying to weaponize it, the technology behind the Covid vaccine demonstrates they could have created a virus that would both hide from the immune system and target race-linked proteins which have minimal expression in the native Chinese population, such as eye pigments or the ability to digest cows milk - not something that would so easily blow back on them. At worse, they'd be covering up an accident.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

the ability to digest cows milk

Can the world quench China’s bottomless thirst for milk?

The long read: China’s leaders have championed milk as the emblem of a modern, affluent society – but their radical plan to triple the nation’s consumption will have a huge environmental cost

www.theguardian.com

Or to quote a 180cm tall Chinese friend “Feed an Asian milk and we grow tall as you white guys.”

His dad moved to Canada as a small child and adopted a western diet. He grew to about 175cm. Family pictures of him with the family back in China made him look like a basketball player. A full head taller. When I was in China in 2007 everyone under 30 was regular white man height.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

The six feet distancing and hand washing will have to stay in place until the end of the pandemic I guess.

The hand-washing thing should be simply automatic for everyone. I'm disturbed that, even today, it takes a pandemic to convince some people to wash their hands.