Contagion film inspired vaccine strategy-Hancock

With all due respect to all the points of view put forward within this thread, does anyone really believe any other government would have fared any better? Given the fact that this pandemic is a brand new phenomenon, that, quite frankly, has caught the entire world cold.
Of course the question, and indeed, any answers given will be purely hypothetical,
10 million of our fellow countrymen have now had the vaccination, that is a great achievement by anyone's standards. I am in no way holding this Tory government aloft as a paragon of all things perfect, but, I seriously doubt any other party would have performed any better within this crisis, and certainly would not have reacted without errors.

 

And? That wasn’t your point.

 

Eu dithered with ordering the vaccine is my point.

 

Who’s to say we wouldn’t. If we’d been in the EU. The statement I posted supports that. Yours didn’t.
All EU countries had the same options to order what they wanted. Irrespective of what the EU recommended.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-55844268

I don't think we would have been leading the world with vaccinations if we were still in the EU.

 

I do agree there would be some errors BUT I'm certain that there would nt be the level of **** up that this government managed because any other government would actually listen to the experts and learn from other governments errors that were further down the road than we were.

 

Read my previous post and my initial post. It was made quite clear last week in many news items. . Individual countries had the opportunity to buy what they wanted but dawdled. We can both think what we like. It doesn’t make it true. I just offered evidence to say you could be wrong. Trouble is, we’ll never know.

On such matters. I believe each country can do what is necessary to protect its own citizens. So Brexit or not. Is irrelevant.

 

Seriously.
This piss pot outfit are a shambles. Nobody would have made a perfect job of it.
But masks. Xmas. Care homes. To name but 3. Total incompetence that didn’t need scientific evidence. In nudgers words.”fookin idiots” except he wouldn’t have said it.

 

Definitely not Corbyn & Abbott

 

I don’t think it’s correct to say that individual countries had the option to buy what they wanted but dawdled. Germany didn’t dawdle and was in discussions with many suppliers relatively early on. However, rather than pressing ahead and ordering doses together with France (as part of a joint German-France scheme), they decided to join the EU procurement scheme which led to months of additional bureaucracy and ultimately a poorly negotiated deal by the EU commission.

 

They had the option. That’s my point. And it was stated over the last few weeks that option was not taken up. Nothing to do with being in or out of the EU. We were still part of the EU when we put our order in. And signed the documents. To use the EU as an excuse is disingenuous.

 

I’m not disputing that part. I’m disputing that EU countries dawdled. They didn’t dawdle, the EU commission applied the brakes.

Nevertheless, I do think it’s telling that the only country that decided not to join the EU vaccine programme was the country that was in the process of leaving the EU. Had we remained in the EU I think it’s highly likely we also would have been part of the programme, regardless whether the choice was ours to make.

 

We’ll never know. But what I do know is Vaccines were ordered as soon as trials began many many months ago. We took the option. they didn’t and we wouldn’t have needed their permission. Regardless. I’m just making the point. I never assume anything on such things, As some appear to do.

 

He doesn't deny it about the movie so I think it's true. Matt has done excellent with vaccines to have us ahead of most of the world. It was reported today he persuaded the gov to buy 100 million of the Oxford AZ vaccine when they were wanting to buy only 30 million. Thankfully he got his way. He wanted to shut the border last March like Patel also wanted but they were not listened to.

 

We’ve had the biggest collapse of GDP of any major economy, and the highest death rate in the world.

And we’re an island!

We put all our eggs in the vaccine basket (vaccines which we’ve paid over the odds way ahead of knowing if they worked) and extended the time between doses.

We ignored the guidance of the pharma manufacturers on doses and extended the time between them hoping efficacy wouldn’t diminish too much. And it’s only luck that one of them with very poor data so far from the test population is 3/4 effective (not the 90% first touted).

I suspect many will forget or ignore or deny the utter **** show that came before the vaccinations... the one aspect the NHS have actually had a major part in and hasn’t been outsourced wholly to Tory donors and cronies.

If you think nobody could have done better, when the worlds economies are in better position and their death rates less devastating than ours, then I’m really not sure what more can be said.

 

Various inaccuracies in this post.

The 90% effectiveness that was first touted by the JCVI was in relation to the Pfizer jab. It was never claimed the first dose of the AZ jab was 90% effective.

Also, the Oxford/AZ was never supposed to be used 3 weeks apart. Again, this was the Pfizer jab. The reason Pfizer recommended a 3 week gap is because its the period used in the trials. The reason they used 3 weeks was because they wanted to complete the trials as soon as possible. Had they used a 12 week gap they’d have been waiting another 2 months for the data and we’d have been waiting another 2 months for its approval. It was not because they thought 3 weeks would result in higher efficacy - there are plenty of theoretical reasons why a longer period between doses gives better longer lasting immunity, and indeed the AZ data shows this.

Besides, regardless of any headline efficacy figures for these vaccines, ultimately what’s really important is preventing severe disease and death in as many people as possible as soon as possible. There have been no deaths in the AZ trials using just one dose, so in that sense it’s 100% effective. Surely getting 10 million people vaccinated against severe disease and death in the shortest possible time is clearly the right decision.

It’s also slightly odd that you think the recent AZ results is due to luck and not the expertise of Oxford, the MHRA, the JVCI, the vaccines task force and SAGE who were relatively confident that this is what the data would show from the start and hence why this dosing regime was recommended.

Where is the evidence to suggest we paid way over the odds for vaccines? AZ is producing at cost, so not true there. It’s thought the EU paying broadly same price for the Pfizer jab as we are. Any surplus can be used to help poorer countries or for us next winter, and we’ve been a very large contributor to the COVAX scheme. Besides, the amount spent on vaccinations pales into significance compared to the additional weeks of lockdown required without it.

You only have to look over the other side of the channel to see how vaccination could have played out. Macron claiming the AZ vaccine is quasi ineffective in the over 65s and the Germans briefing that it’s only 8% effective just because they’ve had a spat with AZ - pushing untrue anti-vax rhetoric in an attempt to placate an increasingly angry populace.
The EU commission turning down 500 million additional doses of Pfizer because the French wanted an equal number of their national Sanofi doses ordered.
Protracted negotiations with AZ who are producing at cost.
Resisting any sort of indemnification, delaying negotiations, before ultimately conceding. Not investing sufficiently in local production sites to secure early supplies.
Taking steps to block vaccine exports because they haven’t invested in local production, breaking international law.
Not placing a sufficient number of orders or a sufficient diversity of orders.
Initially only allocating €2 billion to vaccine procurement when every week of lockdown costs €billions more.
Many more deaths and a long delay to GDP recovery looking increasingly more likely as as result.

Handy little explainer from the BBC that covers some of these points:

 

We left the EU in January 2020. The transition period ended on 31st December.

Therefore, we were no longer in the EU when we ordered the vaccines.

 

"There will be one along in a minute..." Italy programme has pretty much 'ground to a halt' in most regions (One or two lagging behind a bit with administering their available supplies) but most like ours (Marche) have managed to go over 100% (apparently you can eke a couple more extra doses out of some bottles. No significant deliveries forthcoming several days now which is frustrating as the distribution, storage, infrastructure is all in place.

https://www.governo.it/it/cscovid19/report-vaccini/

 

Thats a very revisionist and selective history. But anyway..

UK costs (as provided in the week (22/1/21)
Pfizer £15
AZ £3
Moderna £24-28

EU costs (source, the Belgian finance minister on 18th December)

Oxford/AstraZeneca: €1.78
Johnson & Johnson: $8.50
Sanofi/GSK: €7.56.
Pfizer/BioNTech: €12.
CureVac: €10.
Moderna: $18. (US are paying $15)

I never said first jabs gave such efficacy as none do on the first shot. But it was teased that efficacy of AZ could be up to 90% with delayed doses, which it isn't (curiously only after Moderna and Pfizer gave such high efficacy, so AZ looked less "world beating" than was hoped). Pfizer guidance is 3-4 weeks which most countries are abiding by and there is zero evidence its efficacy is altered by delaying for 3 months. Its a PHE choice (influenced by government) to vaccinate on a 1st shot with a big delay and as yet there is no scientific evidence to show this is a good one. It is therefore luck at this point whether it pans out or not.

I'd rather a government that alleged it was following the science all along would actually do so and not just gamble.

And that's just vaccines. But if you want to defend DePfeffels actions from shaking hands with covid patients, to his speech in Greenwich saying they'd buck the trend of locking down, to not calling off Cheltenham, to the debacle of PPE, care homes, ventilators, the delay of lockdowns, Cummings' eye test, Nightingale hospitals, billions of contracts given to tory donors (and fast tracked) with no skill or transparent tender process, the shambles of test and trace and crony appointments to key roles, border management and so on.

And thats before the lies, the deceit, the covering up of inconvenient data (funny how we we can get accurate data for vaccinations isn't it?)

And thats just off the top of my head without reminding myself of the carnage they've inflicted through choice and or inaction.

It's a global pandemic, and any government would make mistakes. That is obvious. But many have made far less mistakes and poor choices than our country has. And people shouldn't forget that, just because we've overspent to get vaccines before other nations.

 

I appreciate your anti Cons stance affects your view on all this but two points.... The delay of 12 weeks between dose 1 and dose 2 has only been stated as beneficial for the AZ vaccine as far as I am aware. As regards costs of vaccine being higher and UK Govt 'wasting' money ordering / paying up front.... In the long run, the economy that recovers first will reap the benefits.... You omit that from your comments

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...on-euro-price-tag-for-bungled-vaccine-rollout