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• #27
Boris was pretty explicit that the plan is to vaccinate however much of the population by Easter and then remove most restrictions.
If the virus continues to circulate amongst younger people
who don’t vote Toryand ruins or ends the lives of some fraction of them, then sucks to be you. -
• #28
If I was old I wouldn't fancy going out about my normal life even with a vaccine if covid is still rife amongst younger people (given it only has a % efficacy) . I also still don't fancy catching it myself!
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• #29
Nice to know a healthy 40 year old relative had jumped the queue and getting vaccinated today.
Meanwhile 80 year old family friend undergoing chemo too scared to go out to get the vaccine....
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• #31
My sister who is a frontline doctor but not an epidemiologist is extremely unimpressed with the 1 dose strategy.
She says it gives partial protection ie you get it but less likely to get very sick - so on for reducing pressure on hospitals but not that useful for keeping the frontline working. And because it's untested for this use it's unclear how long that partial protection lasts. She's had her second dose cancelled. Dad (who's elderly/vulnerable) is still due to get his second dose in next couple of days.
I was unimpressed with Blair making pronouncements on it before Christmas, but surely the gov are 'following the science' (advice) on this one? Thoughts?
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• #32
My Mother (86 walks with frame after hip replacement) has got her appointment for the vaccine. She is in Hull, it is being held at KC stadium a couple of miles for her, probably up to 10miles for other folk in Hull. The appointment time is 10:04, there are booking times one a minute. I hope i'm wrong but can't see it going well. They said the next jab would be in 21days.
She is walking distance from her Doctors and 3 pharmacist where she can go for her flu jab. -
• #33
My 87 year old father had his second jab on Wednesday in Halesowen, West Midlands and reported that it seemed very efficient. The Doctor who vaccinated him said she had done 396 the day before! A friend's father also had his second jab the same day in Wolverhampton.
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• #34
My Gran (93) is getting her second jab on the 10th, very exciting stuff.
Also heard some delivery riders last night "I'm definitely not going to take this stupid vaccine, no-ones going to inject me with any virus!". First Covidiots I've heard in person.
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• #35
Interesting read about hwo the vaccine works: https://twitter.com/PowerDNS_Bert/status/1342568484946010116?s=20
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• #36
Heroic effort from the doctor!
In comparison, in France, they vaccinated 500 people in the first week.
Apparently the vaccine needed a signed consent form, and a doctor's consultation (along with the associated paperwork required for the consultation, as well as payment or exchange of insurance details. -
• #37
I don't know how long the Doctor's shift was but if it was 8 hours then she was doing about 50 inoculations an hour!
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• #38
My mother , 89 , got her jab yesterday at Leicester racecourse which is 6 miles away . She is house bound but got transport from her grand daughter who managed to change her shift as a paramedic.
She was very impressed by the efficiency of the whole set up once there but more than that it was the first time she'd been in the outside world for 10 months.Meanwhile in Forest Hill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCYa_i-crMs
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• #39
My Mother, 86, had her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine this am. I was a bit apprehensive, thinking that all those pre war born folk used to queueing and waiting for things would all be there in droves hours before their appointment time, I had no need to be. It was really well organised with stewards every hundred yards or so, directing traffic and pointing you to parking places and drop off points. Got straight in to the place and ticked off the register, given a raffle ticket for your number to be called. Very shortly forwarded to another room about 20 x 20m with 4 sets of seats against three walls and a treatment table and chair centre to the fourth wall, with another table for admin. This room was used for administering and the 15min wait for checking for reactions. All the recipients that came in were born in 1935, co-incidence or order?
The couple after my Mother were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary and did see the vaccine as wonderful present. Everybody in the whole place were enthusiastic and happy.
My mothers appointment was at 10:04 we arrived in the building at 09:55, she had the jab at 10:04 !and we were out the building at 10:25.
My only little concern was that the database of vaccinations carried out was separate to an NHS one and it automatically sent an email to mother's surgery for them to update her medical records.
All in all a pleasant procedure, especially for Mother -
• #40
Putting Covid vaccines into pills could soon move from dream to reality after a Sussex-based biotech signed an agreement with a US pharmaceutical company to test the technology in clinical trials.
Burgess Hill-based IosBio has found a way to turn injected vaccines into orally administered tablets. The technology is now being used by ImmunityBio, a Californian company developing a vaccine against Covid after signing a licensing agreement with iosBio.
Clinical trials in monkeys have shown the oral vaccine made using iosBio technology to be highly effective, while the jab version is already in phase two/three trials.
The oral vaccine will begin clinical trials on Americans this month and ImmunityBio is applying for regulatory approval to run trials in the UK.
IosBio’s technology is called OraPro. It engineers vaccines into pills that can withstand temperatures of up to 50C, allowing them to pass through the stomach and be directly absorbed into the mucous membranes.
“You catch Covid in your mucosal cells,” said Wayne Channing, chief executive of iosBio. “But with jabs you get injected into the arm which goes into the muscles and blood cells. Our tablets go straight into mucosal cells to illicit mucosal immunity so we hit the virus where it is.
“When you catch this virus you breath it in or swallow it and 80pc of your immune system cells are mucosal so we are addressing that directly. I think this will be a new paradigm in vaccination.”
Under the terms of the licensing agreement, ImmunityBio has exclusive rights to OraPro. In return, IosBio will get royalties on global sales of the approved vaccine.
“The results from the non-human primate trial were outstanding for oral and I think oral is the right strategy,” Mr Channing added.
“Patrick Soon-Shiong, the chief executive of ImmunityBio, called me and said he had woken up at 3am and thought, this should be an oral vaccine.”
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• #41
As a 70 year old in good health in North London I was surprised to get a call from my GP surgery yesterday telling me I had an appointment today to receive the Covid vaccine. I duly went along (Lordship Lane N17 health centre) where the receptionist was unsure I should get it but the manager gave the go-ahead. All very efficiently done but I'm puzzled as London, I believe, is lagging in the roll-out.
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• #42
My place of work has been classified as frontline service by the local government and as a result the vaccination unit is stopping by to administer our 400+employees on Monday with the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
In a country where we’ve had less than 10 cases daily in the community I’m not sure whether I’m in that much of a rush or whether I should just get it over with.
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• #43
My dad has his first vaccine shot on Saturday, a big relief given his other health concerns.
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• #44
Great news, my 88 year old nan has hers on thursday, she cant wait (neither can we)
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The results of the cocktail touted by Trump seem promising and it seems to provide 100% protection against symptomatic covid, 50% lower rates of infection and reduced viral loads.
Passive vaccination only tends to give protection for weeks, and thus is only suggested for people at high risk of being infected.
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• #45
Got my first jab two weeks ago (work in a hospital). Also had covid early last year so am viewing this as a booster with the second dose in a week or two really topping things off. Sweden in the middle of the peloton roll out wise, behind the UK and a few others but not a total disaster for once. What’s worrying me now is my ailing mother who still hasn’t got her first jab.
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• #46
About the Johnson & Johnson vaccine:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/29/janssen-one-dose-vaccine-shown-to-work-against-covid
Nomen is evidently not omen. :)
Glad it's not made by Grayling & Grayling.
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• #47
The practicalities of actually being able to identify who might benefit from this and treat them, within the first few days of infection, would be incredibly resource intensive and hit and miss - very unlikely to get approved in the UK, and the evidence published so far for it is actually pretty weak when you dig in to it unfortunately.
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• #48
It probably only worked in Trump's case because the virus realised what it had got itself into.
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• #49
Some details of the animal use in testing COVID-19 vaccines, pretty disgusting, but that was to be expected. I'd previously got the impression that it had been kept pretty quiet.
Millions of creatures including monkeys, hamsters, horseshoe crabs, mice, ferrets and pigs have been killed in the quest for a Covid cure.
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• #50
UK vaccine supply chain article in FT is good
https://www.ft.com/content/8b48a853-5b14-4378-91d4-17026fa15472?shareType=nongift
I think so.
But I'm not sure if The Plan is to bring the r rate below 1 or just reduce the number of hospital admissions.