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Coronavirus

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I know we are on the whole left leaning and pro europe here, but you have to have serious blinkers on not to see that invoking article 16 was an absolute dick move by the EU. Fortunately they've swiftly seen that themselves and reversed the decision.

For Macron to then rubbish the efficiency of the vaccine they so desperately want by claiming it is 'quasi-ineffective' on the elderly when this is patiently untrue and there is no evidence to back it up is pretty disgusting and dangerous to public health. I'd hoped we'd left fake news from that level of authority behind with trump.
 
AT86 said:
Criticism and critique of individuals politicians words and actions is one thing.

Sweeping statements and stereotyping of a whole nation’s population is quite another.
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My comment was not intended to defend casual racism, although it's easy to see how diplomatic behaviour this bad would feed such feelings along with a sense of validation for those of an anti EU/pro brexit persuasion.
 
I think we're all quite capable of criticising the actions of a country's government or leaders without resorting to xenophobic statements being banded about. That's not "snowflake tosh", it's being capable of sensible discussion and criticism without resorting to stereotypical cheap shots about a country as a whole.

A few things of note:
  • The EU made a massive mistake with Ireland last night and rightfully corrected it. I actually applaud the UK government on the stance they made last night and in the past few days. Very calm, measured public statements and clearly a lot of diplomacy going on in the background. A demonstration of how things should be done within UK government, instead of past chest beating via statements to the press. Like us with Brexit, with many elections coming up in European countries it's clear that there's a lot of that chest beating is going on with some MEPs and MPs. Subsequently lots of pressure coming back onto the European Commission too, hence the massive mis-step yesterday.
  • "We are holding nearly all the cards". We categorically do not, and that was demonstrated by how the UK government reacted to the actions of the European Commission in recent days. As nice as it would be go it alone if the neighbours upset us, we can't. We only currently make the AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK, the next to be manufactured here, Novavax isn't coming on stream until the second half of the year. Pfizer has manufacturing sites that produce ingredients in the UK, but as far as I'm aware no actual vaccine manufacturing. The Pfizer vaccine is still essential to gain access to, with many of the most vulnerable having received their first dose of this vaccine from December onwards. Let's also not forget that we need the reagents to produce vaccines and carry out our testing, along with the equipment to bottle and administer them. They're not all going to come from the UK, so a trade war is not in either party's interest.
  • Whilst I'm appalled at the European Commission's response to the AstraZeneca vaccine issue, I do always go back to thinking about what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot. I'm no expert in contract law, but when lawyers can't agree on who is right following the contract being published, it's easy to see why the EC believe they are in the right. I don't think the UK government would be sitting back, even with a "best efforts" contract and accepting only 25% of expected deliveries. Whether that's the EU's, UK's or AstraZeneca's fault for the way they've worded their contracts and made their promises is difficult for any of us non-experts to accurately assess.
  • Strip Macron's comments on global vaccination back to their facts, and he's right in that respect. It's useless us all being vaccinated when we holiday and travel around the world and receive so many goods from outside of the UK. It's the same stance the World Health Organisation has took when talking about the slow movement in vaccinations in poor and middle income countries. It's great to have a speedy roll out, but like other pandemics it does need to be addressed on a global basis. That said, his comments on AstraZeneca's vaccine are needless and may have the opposite effect in their own vaccine programme. If a country's president is talking down a vaccine where a large number of its citizens already have a distrust of vaccines, then it will be difficult to encourage them to take what their leader has basically said is an "inferior vaccine".
  • I'm also incredibly disappointed with the actions of some in government and the medicine regulators in Germany. Their incorrect leak from senior officials about the AstraZeneca vaccine being only 8% effective in over 65's earlier in the week was utterly reckless and frankly quite dangerous. When it comes to public health, the press should not be releasing headline grabbing stories off the back of anonymous sources. Likewise, Germany's Robert Koch Institute releasing their information about the AZ vaccine ahead of the EU's own medicine regulator came across as incredibly petty.
 
Sorry to divert from the current discussion, but vaccination rates are right back up; 414,000 people received a first dose yesterday, taking the overall number of first doses up to 7.9 million. This means that Boris is over halfway towards his target of 15 million by 15th February, and I very much think he could still achieve it.

Combined with the news I said earlier about how vaccines are already slowing the virus’ spread, I think the outlook could possibly be far rosier in a month or two’s time!
 
Yup away from the EU nonsense, it's nice to see vaccination numbers back at a decent level yesterday. Not sure what caused the worrying drop this week, but I'm guessing a combination of poor weather earlier in the week and a reporting lag, along with a push to get those vaccinated who are homebound or have limited mobility to get to a vaccination site. Fingers crossed it keeps going!
 
I think the article 16 thing was EU politicians chancing their arm on this knowing they would most probably need to backtrack. And waited to see the response from UK.


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delta79 said:
I think the article 16 thing was EU politicians chancing their arm on this knowing they would most probably need to backtrack. And waited to see the response from UK.


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I cant believe that for a second. It's been hugely damaging for them internally with their relationship with Ireland and made them look silly. It was supposed to be a show of strength but it's been a display of weakness and indecision, they'd have known that if it had been planned.

If our government had done it they'd be being torn apart here, not excused.
 
I sense within the EU at the moment there's definitely a sense of panic due to one of their largest orders of vaccines (Sanofi - 300 million doses) failing initial trials, meaning it's now delayed until at least later in the year. Sanofi have subsequently offered their production facilities to bottle the Pfizer vaccine.

The intentions of the EU centralising orders for vaccines was to ensure that all member countries had access to vaccines at a fair price, to ensure there was a fair crack at everyone being vaccinated at a similar rate. So good intentions on the face of it, but procurement of doses for 447 million people is a mammoth task, and essentially its proved to be far too slow a process to achieve the results needed.

Vaccine purchasing last year was a betting game. You essentially place orders for a multitude of manufacturers, hedging your bets that if one doesn't work/is delayed there's sufficient of others to cover the shortfall. For a population nearly 7 times bigger than the UK, I don't personally believe they ordered anywhere near enough initial doses quickly enough, and I dare say there was too much emphasis put on production within the EU especially for the likes of the Sanofi vaccine. It's great for procurement to have economic benefits, but if it's at the expense of the wider economy as it delays a rollout then what's the point?

I don't think there was ever an outright intention to break Article 16, it was a snowball effect due to an exasperated leadership not getting anywhere with AstraZeneca. The EU have been saying the contract was clear cut, hoped the publication would settle that argument when it ended up just further confusing matters. This snowball effect led to some extremely poor decision making without little/any member state consultation or proper consideration of the wider impact it would have. That's why we had the very speedy backtrack following widespread condemnation from multiple sides, and as pluk mentioned extremely damaging even for relations between the Commission and member states.
 
Craig said:
Not sure what caused the worrying drop this week, but I'm guessing a combination of poor weather earlier in the week and a reporting lag, along with a push to get those vaccinated who are homebound or have limited mobility to get to a vaccination site. Fingers crossed it keeps going!
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I think it is a combination of that each batch needs to go through a quality check as well as they were pushing to get all care homes done by a set date, meaning that they were going out to do those which takes longer than calling people in.

Because of the supply chain and routine quality checks on each batch, they did say that the roll out will be up and down which is to be expected.

I think we are all desperate to get our lives back to some sort of normality. The most thing that causes anxiety and stress is the uncertainty of not knowing, at the moment we are all living our lives day by day, living in limbo, can't make any plans, but living in hope for the future.

Jess and I have been house bound since last March, we haven't left our home for anything. Receiving the vaccine which for us can't come soon enough will hopefully mean that we can start to venture out. The amount of people that automatically think that because of Jess' disability that we have either already had the vaccine or are a top priority for receiving the vaccine.
 
@RoyJess, are you guys due to be vaccinated soon? I hope for both of your sakes that you’re able to return to some kind of normality soon; I’m sure you’ll get an appointment soon enough, if you haven’t had one already.

I know quite a number of people who’ve been vaccinated now; all of my immediate relatives over 80 have been vaccinated, my mum’s been vaccinated (she’s an NHS worker, so qualified for early vaccination), my cousins have been vaccinated (also both NHS workers) and my nan’s getting hers next week.

Interestingly, I think all of them might have had the Pfizer jab; are there less of AstraZeneca’s vaccines at the moment or something?
 
Seems that the EU is now saying it wont stop the Pfizer doses arriving in the EU. SO far only Express and Mail are reporting it so not sure of its validity.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1...s-down-over-covid-vaccine-export-controls-evg

I think given the amount of vaccine doses the UK is poised to get the best thing the UK can do now is work with the EU to help out and ensure they get a decent supply as well. As much as we agree or disagree with Brexit, we have nothing against the EU or its residents and we are all in this together.
 
Well I don’t agree, I’m perfectly happy to help developing nations with vaccines once we have vaccinated over half of our population but not the EU, they were late to the party and now expect the same delivery schedules as the UK.
Lets not forget the UK paid into the EU budget last year still so in actual fact we have paid twice for them.

Forget what the WHO say, whoever vaccines first will have the fastest economic recovery, this is a race, that’s why the EU is so upset about loosing it.
 
Matt N said:
@RoyJess, are you guys due to be vaccinated soon? I hope for both of your sakes that you’re able to return to some kind of normality soon; I’m sure you’ll get an appointment soon enough, if you haven’t had one already.
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Thanks, not sure when we be call up for it. It's just a waiting game. We should get it as priority as we get the flu vaccine and the criteria is the same even though Jess' condition is not mentioned on either. All I know is that we were shuffed to the bottom for our flu vaccine.

I do fear (and many other disable people think the same) that the disable are the forgotten ones in all this. The NHS data shows that the disable are disproportionally have a high risk from covid complications and death. However the independent committee looked at different data when they drew up the vaccine priority list.

Matt N said:
I know quite a number of people who’ve been vaccinated now; all of my immediate relatives over 80 have been vaccinated, my mum’s been vaccinated (she’s an NHS worker, so qualified for early vaccination), my cousins have been vaccinated (also both NHS workers) and my nan’s getting hers next week.
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That is the frustrating thing, we know lots of people posting on social media that they have receive their vaccine (plus all our neighbours). My youngest daughter received hers in the first week of December as she works in a care home.

Matt N said:
Interestingly, I think all of them might have had the Pfizer jab; are there less of AstraZeneca’s vaccines at the moment or something?
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I think it depends where you get yours done. If it is the main vaccination centre, then is the Pfizer jab, if it your local GP or centre, then is will be the AstraZenceca's. It is all down to whether they have the minus 80 degree (or what ever the temp is) freezer storage facility or not
 
Excellent news; vaccination is now right back up, as nearly 500,000 received first doses yesterday (29th January). The total number of first doses administered is now nearly 8.4 million.

As of 29th January 2021, the current vaccination stats are as follows (grabbed from the GOV.UK vaccination stats page: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations):
  • Total first doses: 8,378,940
  • Total second doses: 480,432
  • First doses administered yesterday: 490,000 (to nearest 10k)
  • Second doses administered yesterday: 2,200 (to nearest 100)
The 7-day average for first doses is currently holding strong at around 350,000, in spite of recent supply issues, and it does appear to be starting to climb again after a slight fall.

Promising stuff, don’t you think?
 
Burbs said:
Matt, I genuinely don't know what I'd do without your regular posts of positivity. I'm sure others here feel the same. I've nothing to add to the discussion, but wanted to thank you.
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No problem at all! I admit that I do often go looking around for these types of stories, and sometimes finding them is easier than it is at other times, I’ll admit, but the past few days have been pretty good, what with the news that vaccines are slowing the spread and this, but I’m glad you enjoy my stories!

If ever I find something positive and worth talking about, I’ll be sure to post it!
 
BigT said:
Well I don’t agree, I’m perfectly happy to help developing nations with vaccines once we have vaccinated over half of our population but not the EU, they were late to the party and now expect the same delivery schedules as the UK.
Lets not forget the UK paid into the EU budget last year still so in actual fact we have paid twice for them.

Forget what the WHO say, whoever vaccines first will have the fastest economic recovery, this is a race, that’s why the EU is so upset about loosing it.
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This isn’t going away until the virus becomes endemic and that won’t happen until there is a global level of immunity so the virus only causes mild disease. You can ignore the WHO if you want but every nation that has has suffered worse in this pandemic than the ones that listened to them.

If you start deciding who you support in this based on political opinion then you just delay your own recovery. Like it or not mainland Europe will always be our biggest destination for international travel based purely on geography (Brexit hasn’t caused a tectonic shift in our global location), if we as a country want to be purely selfish we would support those nations we trade with and travel to to get vaccine cover (which is probably why the UK government is being relatively muted about the EU at the moment).

The EU royally messed this up, they will suffer for that politically in due course. But don’t forget we threatened exactly the same thing last year when hot heads like Cummins had the ear of the PM. No country/ organisation is immune from putting fools in their government unfortunately.
 
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