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3 hours ago, keelansgrandad said:

Thanks chaps. First time in my life I have ever been excited about an injection. Remember queuing up at West Earlham community centre as a child to have have one of the mass jabs they did for Polio or something. I swear the needle was a scaffold pole.

 

 

Yes, I don't recall the polio vax as a sugar lump. I distinctly remember getting it at school and it was an injection. 1957 or 58 I believe.

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3 minutes ago, A Load of Squit said:

Here's a playlist you should consider.

Needles and Pins - The Searchers

Another Jab in the Arm - Pink Floyd

Want you So Bad - The Vaccines

Close to You - The Cure

Celebration - Kool and the Gang

Keep feeling Vaccination - Human League.

Indeed

You may not believe this but some genuinely dance as they check in lol

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5 minutes ago, A Load of Squit said:

Here's a playlist you should consider.

Needles and Pins - The Searchers

Another Jab in the Arm - Pink Floyd

Want you So Bad - The Vaccines

Close to You - The Cure

Celebration - Kool and the Gang

Keep feeling Vaccination - Human League.

Reminds me of a time when my Mum was in the outpatients at hospital waiting for an appointment and they were playing The Verve - the Drugs don't work.  Which she found very amusing 😄

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1 minute ago, Well b back said:

Indeed

You may not believe this but some genuinely dance as they check in lol

Do the Vaccination - Little Eva (or Kylie)

 

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I have followed up the new Oxford Lancet report, and as per their initial reports and believes in November / December they have proved correct. The missing link in their efficacy was indeed time delay and not size of dosage. It seems to bring it up to around 90% which clearly is very good compared to where they were. 
I only read the headline results so far so I will report back as to wether they now have meaningful over 55 data.

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5 minutes ago, A Load of Squit said:

Do the Vaccination - Little Eva (or Kylie)

 

Lol

The ones ( especially the blokes ) that come in their Sunday best do the nurses / vaccinators heads in. To get to their arm coat, jacket, sometimes waistcoat and / or cardigan and then the cuff links. If you are really unlucky they have a tight fitting long sleeve shirt that won’t slide above their elbow and really unlucky if underneath that you get a long sleeve vest.

For them maybe the stripper music is more appropriate.

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1 hour ago, Well b back said:

I have followed up the new Oxford Lancet report, and as per their initial reports and believes in November / December they have proved correct. The missing link in their efficacy was indeed time delay and not size of dosage. It seems to bring it up to around 90% which clearly is very good compared to where they were. 
I only read the headline results so far so I will report back as to wether they now have meaningful over 55 data.

I have spoken to two people who a month were defiantly not going to have the jab.

As they get nearer their group it has become, well, I don't want to be the one who spoils the party.

I hope the vaccinator throws it at their arm.

(Is vaccinator a word? If not it may be soon perhaps. WBB, you can add it to the CV)

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Good report from Spectre as usual, the webinar was pretty good yesterday too.

I fully agree with him about schools and teachers, lets get the teachers vaccinated and the kids back to school as a matter of priority.

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Vaccine booked for next Thursday. #relieved!  I have to say credit where it's due, the Government appear to be keeping up with quotas.

However, I reserve the real gratitude for the likes of Sarah Gilbert and her colleagues, the NHS and the thousands of good people volunteering, all true heroes in my eyes.

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19 minutes ago, Daz Sparks said:

Vaccine booked for next Thursday. #relieved!  I have to say credit where it's due, the Government appear to be keeping up with quotas.

However, I reserve the real gratitude for the likes of Sarah Gilbert and her colleagues, the NHS and the thousands of good people volunteering, all true heroes in my eyes.

... but it was the government that put in the money stating ' do whatever it takes whatever the cost'  which was 7 times more per capita compared to you know who, and equal to the USA. 🤗

Edited by paul moy

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40 minutes ago, Daz Sparks said:

Vaccine booked for next Thursday. #relieved!  I have to say credit where it's due, the Government appear to be keeping up with quotas.

However, I reserve the real gratitude for the likes of Sarah Gilbert and her colleagues, the NHS and the thousands of good people volunteering, all true heroes in my eyes.

Good for you. A lot of us TOGS have either had it or close to it.

We may be able to assess peoples eras from the jab appointments.

Moy won't need one as he is under, no not a rock, 18.

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23 minutes ago, paul moy said:

Breaking News :

Netherlands bans AstraZeneca jab for over 65s......    😂

So have Ireland, but maybe this explains it for you, it is not political and you keep saying banned, you are lying it’s on hold awaiting more data.

https://www.independent.ie/news/moderna-and-pfizer-vaccines-are-preferential-to-oxford-astrazeneca-jab-for-over-65s-says-hse-40047453.html

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Just now, keelansgrandad said:

Good for you. A lot of us TOGS have either had it or close to it.

We may be able to assess peoples eras from the jab appointments.

Moy won't need one as he is under, no not a rock, 18.

He’s on his break at KFC

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Why, if we are not closing our borders, just as we are over the peak are we not introducing quarantining until 15 February?

11 more days for people to stroll in and stroll out.

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25 minutes ago, paul moy said:

... but it was the government that put in the money stating ' do whatever it takes whatever the cost'  which was 7 times more per capita compared to you know who, and equal to the USA. 🤗

Thanks for that, firstly the USA put in lots more than the U.K. a certain president needed a vaccine by November. Does it matter though who did what.

Along with tens of thousands of others ( including doctors and nurses on their days off ) we give up our time, thanks for that lack of respect w*****. If it was left to t**** like you we would not be getting far. 
Four of our team are even European, so you would probably abuse them anyway.

I appreciate you like to think Boris Johnson designed the vaccine ( he does anyway ), but it was Sarah Gilbert and her team.

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55 minutes ago, Daz Sparks said:

Vaccine booked for next Thursday. #relieved!  I have to say credit where it's due, the Government appear to be keeping up with quotas.

However, I reserve the real gratitude for the likes of Sarah Gilbert and her colleagues, the NHS and the thousands of good people volunteering, all true heroes in my eyes.

Thanks Daz, and I am sure it will go well. Good news on Oxford today as well, as they expected the efficacy goes up with the tweek.

If it’s ok I will print your comments off as there is like a thanks message board. Especially in the older groups it really is fantastic to see the joy on their faces once they have had the jab. I have done a lot of rewarding things in my life, but this probably beats the lot.

 

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4 minutes ago, Well b back said:

Thanks Daz, and I am sure it will go well. Good news on Oxford today as well, as they expected the efficacy goes up with the tweek.

If it’s ok I will print your comments off as there is like a thanks message board. Especially in the older groups it really is fantastic to see the joy on their faces once they have had the jab. I have done a lot of rewarding things in my life, but this probably beats the lot.

 

Yes we will all owe you and your band of brothers (and sisters) a big, big thank you when all this is done and dusted.

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18 minutes ago, Well b back said:

If it’s ok I will print your comments off as there is like a thanks message board.

Absolutely WBB.

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10 hours ago, It's Character Forming said:

Interview with Zahawi on BBC breakfast this morning.  He was confident they'll hit the target of the first 4 groups by Feb 15th.  He said the plan is then to continue the next 5 groups until the 9 at risk groups have been done (which completes phase 1 of the vaccine roll out and will mean about 30m people have been vaccinated he said), the Vaccine committee will be asked to decide who gets the vaccine from then onwards, so no plan to change anything until phase 1 has completed.

 

He said on timescale to complete phase 1, this will be published after getting through the first 4 groups.  The interviewer was trying to get him to agree to dates based on how many vaccines are currently being given (a sort of back of a fag packet calculate during a live interview), which I thought was really unhelpful when he'd already said it is too early to do this.  He pointed out the supply may be variable and when we get to March more 2nd doses will be needed as well.  He would not be drawn on how this will affect the number of first doses that can be given, so it is not clear whether we're looking at higher numbers by then so we can continue with a lot of first doses or what.  Yes I'd love to know how long the process is likely to take, but I felt this was more about trying to get him to commit to something so the media can then focus remorselessly on it from now on - lazy journalism and unhelpful IMO.

 

However, thinking about it, vaccine numbers only really started to ramp up in mid-Jan when we hit 300k+ doses for the first time.  Tracking on 12 weeks from then takes you to early April, so really it should be around the end of March before the number of second doses really takes off.  So it seems to me realistic to be aiming for around 30m people vaccinated by the end of March, based on current supply levels continuing.

Neat little chart attached in this link (345k and 600k rates modelled)

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/uk-back-normal-summer-jabs-23445909?utm_source=linkCopy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

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14 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

Yes we will all owe you and your band of brothers (and sisters) a big, big thank you when all this is done and dusted.

The nurses are the amazing ones. We have one that works the wards and then vaccinates on two of their three days off. Seeing some of those relieved faces KG is plenty enough reward for all of us.

The ICU nurses are the real heroines and heroes, when you hear their stories you get to realise that they have been living and working through your worst nightmare, often living separated from their families, and with the red tell tale creases down their faces where their masks rub. I hope what they have done is never forgotten, they will need everybodies support at the end of this.

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11 hours ago, It's Character Forming said:

Interview with Zahawi on BBC breakfast this morning.  He was confident they'll hit the target of the first 4 groups by Feb 15th.  He said the plan is then to continue the next 5 groups until the 9 at risk groups have been done (which completes phase 1 of the vaccine roll out and will mean about 30m people have been vaccinated he said), the Vaccine committee will be asked to decide who gets the vaccine from then onwards, so no plan to change anything until phase 1 has completed.

 

He said on timescale to complete phase 1, this will be published after getting through the first 4 groups.  The interviewer was trying to get him to agree to dates based on how many vaccines are currently being given (a sort of back of a fag packet calculate during a live interview), which I thought was really unhelpful when he'd already said it is too early to do this.  He pointed out the supply may be variable and when we get to March more 2nd doses will be needed as well.  He would not be drawn on how this will affect the number of first doses that can be given, so it is not clear whether we're looking at higher numbers by then so we can continue with a lot of first doses or what.  Yes I'd love to know how long the process is likely to take, but I felt this was more about trying to get him to commit to something so the media can then focus remorselessly on it from now on - lazy journalism and unhelpful IMO.

 

However, thinking about it, vaccine numbers only really started to ramp up in mid-Jan when we hit 300k+ doses for the first time.  Tracking on 12 weeks from then takes you to early April, so really it should be around the end of March before the number of second doses really takes off.  So it seems to me realistic to be aiming for around 30m people vaccinated by the end of March, based on current supply levels continuing.

I can get it fairly precise for you if it helps. Assuming the target is hit there will be around 15 million vaccinated mid feb of which around 1/2 million will have received their second jab. So if you go to the daily vaccination and knock off the first 500,000 ( that won’t be exact for your first few days ) you need to transport the daily vaccinated number to a day 11 weeks later, and that will be the number of appointments booked for dose 2 on that day. As an example I was vaccinated on the 7.1.2021 and my appointment is booked for 16:40 pm 29.3.2021, so in theory the number vaccinated 7/1 should have that same number booked in for 29/3.

However I must stress it is not exact as I think it was Ricardo that said he hadn’t been given a second appointment and I reckon these appointments might change unless everyone suddenly knows exactly what vaccine they are having delivered 3 months in advance. 

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From The Spectator :

Until a few weeks ago, the government’s track record on Covid was one of repeated failure. The death toll, the depth of the recession, the public disapproval of the government: Britain’s figures were among the worst in the world. But with vaccines, things have changed. The UK is now on track to be the first major country in the world to vaccinate its way out of lockdown.

The foreign press coverage has turned from mockery to awe, with Britain having vaccinated more people than France, Germany, Italy and Spain put together. Many of those behind this success are virtually unknown to the public. Their story matters, because the Vaccine Taskforce is already being looked to by ministers as a model for how government should work once the pandemic is over.

Its success starts with a failure: the debacle over PPE. When the virus started, Britain was supposed to unlock the reserves of plastic gloves and gowns prepared for a pandemic by Public Health England. Instead, the fiasco that followed saw the government fleeced by private consultants as countries across the world scrabbled for supply and contracts became meaningless. It was a model of what not to do.

Tensions across government ran high — with Downing Street blaming the Department of Health for the debacle. ‘It was a ****show,’ said a No. 10 aide reflecting on that period. Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, concluded that the search for a vaccine would require a new approach — picking a team of outsiders with heft and expertise.

At first, vaccines were seen as a remote possibility — officials pointed out the millions spent in vain on finding a jab for HIV. ‘It was viewed as one of several work-streams,’ says a government aide who was working in No. 10 at the time. ‘The Prime Minister’s main concern was avoiding another lockdown by whatever means available. Which didn’t work.’

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, was more optimistic. The example he brought up, however, was the ending of the pandemic film Contagion, where a vaccine is eventually found but there is a scramble to buy it. A reminder, he said, of the need to prepare.

At the time, scientists at Oxford University were working on a vaccine for Mers, an earlier coronavirus. They switched to Covid-19 in early February and looked for a commercial partner: a deal was almost signed with Merck, a US giant, until the small print came up. ‘We needed a cast-iron pledge that they’d supply us exclusively first, but it said “best efforts”,’ says one minister. The fear, then, was that America would ban vaccine exports. 

When AstraZeneca came along, the first contract was not good enough — Hancock passed a draft to Downing Street, and Sir Patrick and No. 10 aides spotted a supply problem. It did not give the UK the rights to the vaccine that it now enjoys. They came up with the idea to pay for almost all manufacturing costs in return for secure supply in a British plant. ‘Vallance was hammering the point about onshore manufacturing from early on,’ says an official. ‘He was responsible for that Oxford deal.’

Sir Patrick – backed by Dominic Cummings – went to the Prime Minister and said that a vaccine tsar should be appointed so as to avoid repeating old mistakes. The Chancellor agreed – as a former investor with portfolio he believed a hawkish approach on contracts was necessary, even if it carried risk levels that led Treasury officials to describe it as 'an extremely unusual programme'. ‘They needed someone with immense private expertise — a dealmaker,’ says an aide. 

‘Vallance was hammering the point about onshore manufacturing from early on’

In many ways, Kate Bingham was an obvious choice. An established venture capitalist, she has spent her career investing in pharma companies. But her appointment also led to charges of cronyism: she’s married to Jesse Norman, a Treasury minister, and was at school with Rachel Johnson, the Prime Minister’s sister. ‘Boris picked Kate,’ says one minister. ‘It was his big contribution.’ Given 24 hours to consider, she hesitated on the grounds that she had more expertise in therapeutics than vaccines. But she accepted. The post was unpaid.

Others on the taskforce had already been picked by Sir Patrick — who thought that either vaccines or therapeutics would come off, so it was best to bet big on both. He worried about how little anyone in government knew about vaccines: without importing expertise he feared they were doomed to fail. ‘The briefing notes the civil servants were sending in had basic errors in them,’ says one minister. ‘It was shocking.’ Ian McCubbin, a GlaxoSmithKline veteran, was the first to be hired. He was asked how, if the Oxford vaccine worked, it could be mass-produced.

 

The Oxford Biomedica plant, where the AZ vaccine is now being made, was identified by the Business department. ‘We effectively commandeered the manufacturing plant,’ says a minister. The big concern was about the ‘fill and finish’ part of the vaccine process, where drugs are put into a vial. An order was quickly put in for Wockhardt Ltd in Wrexham, which was booked for 18 months. (One of the Prime Minister’s jokes is that it is so-named because they like to work hard.) It is now churning out Oxford vials.

The other mainstay of the Vaccine Taskforce was Nick Elliott, a former army bomb disposal engineer who worked on the railways before specialising in defence procurement. His brief was to ‘make things happen’ — specifically negotiating and delivering contracts. Then came Clive Dix, a Brummie pharmaceuticals chief exec who had known Bingham professionally for years. There were civil servants too. One was Ruth Todd, seconded from the Submarine Delivery Agency. She came up with the idea of codenames for the vaccines, in case any official documents leaked and worldwide competitors would know which vaccines Britain was eyeing. Most members of the taskforce never physically met Bingham, with meetings conducted online.

The UK could not rely on one vaccine coming through. Bingham shortened the 120-odd vaccine candidates to a 23-strong shortlist. Orders were placed for seven vaccines in total, of which three have already been approved, with another three expected. (Sanofi, the French offering, looks like it might fail.) A crunch moment came when Clive Dix chose to prioritise Pfizer over Moderna, whose officials had made headway with the government before Bingham started. The bet was that, for all Moderna’s promise, it would arrive later. So it was to prove: the first orders of Pfizer arrived in December. Moderna is not due until the spring.

There were also tensions over the numbers, with Hancock worried that Bingham only wanted to vaccinate half of the population deemed to be ‘at risk’. He upped the order (which now stands at over 400 million doses for a UK population of 67 million). The plan was always to donate spares to the developing world.

Rolling out the vaccines needed military precision — and the military. Soldiers from 101 Logistic Brigade, under the command of Brigadier Phil Prosser, had been embedded in the NHS since the PPE debacle. ‘They used the same principles of logistics that they did in Afghanistan or Iraq,’ says one official. ‘To them, there is no such thing as “Can’t do it”.’

But there were still several near-misses. One came during the port closures following the French response to the Kent strain of Covid. Lorries were stuck on motorways and among them a delivery of Pfizer vaccines that, once loaded, had to be used within ten days. Ruth Todd didn’t sleep for 36 hours as she came up with contingency plans, including an RAF airlift. ‘We got it from Belgium through France, through the tunnel, into the UK, into our warehouse, in the middle of 3,000 lorries being stuck,’ says one involved.

Once the vaccines were ready to go and be distributed to hospitals and care homes, a plan was needed to ensure that this was done speedily — by bringing in the private sector. As Pfizer’s vaccine needs to be transported at temperatures below freezing, a decision was made not to rely on PHE logistics but to go to companies already used to cold-chain medicine — the distribution arms of Boots and Superdrug. One minister describes it as ‘the best decision we made’.

Though Bingham’s gambles were paying off, she started to become the subject of negative press, with a piece in the Sunday Times saying she had spent £670,000 on PR consultants. Some suspected the briefings were from government departments jealous of her profile. Aides deny it. But when she left the Vaccine Taskforce at the end of December without staying on as an adviser, some thought it a result of her treatment. She has now returned to her investment fund.

 

The story is not over — and it won’t be a true success story until the vaccines issued are proven to work as advertised. If they do, Covid hospital deaths are projected to be 85 per cent lower than they otherwise would be.

But in terms of how things operated, the Vaccine Taskforce is being seen inside government as exemplary. ‘It makes us ask: is it possible to get things done at this speed and with this competence outside of a pandemic?’ says one minister. An unpublished Treasury report on the process is understood to describe it as a blueprint for an industrial strategy in the future.

 
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12 hours ago, benchwarmer said:

In terms of % it looks as though UK is doing far better than EU getting the vaccine out

But look at the actual numbers.  As of yesterday UK had vaccinated approx 10.5m, EU approx 14.3m.

The vaccine manufacturers can't turn it out any faster, and the EU's population is approx 446m compared to UK approx 67.7m.  That's why the % is misleading.  

Lies, damned lies and statistics, courtesy of once trusted media outlets like the BBC.

 

The % is not misleading if you understand what it means. There are 27 member states of the EU, each with their own rollout programs. If you want to measure the effectiveness of the rollout vis-a-vis other countries then the % is a pretty good measure to use. 

By end of Jan: UK 14.2%, EU 2.8%

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9 hours ago, Well b back said:

 

However I must stress it is not exact as I think it was Ricardo that said he hadn’t been given a second appointment and I reckon these appointments might change unless everyone suddenly knows exactly what vaccine they are having delivered 3 months in advance. 

This is correct, I had Pfizer and when I enquired about the second dose I was told the NHS would be in touch. My wife had hers last Saturday (AZ) and wasn't  given a second appointment  either. 

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1 hour ago, Herman said:

I'm glad they are taking this virus seriously.😐

 

Why are they being so slow!

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