Vaccine Megathread - See OP for threadbans

hmmm wrote: »

Why didn't we retain the man with a red flag walking in front of cars? That would reduce road deaths to zero.

I admit the situation thankfully at present allows us to use all our vaccines, but we'll see what happens in late May and June.

I don't know how the red flag walking is relevant. That said, Traffic lights and roundabouts are generally considered safer aren't they? There's a whole science to the design of roundabouts and intersections for an efficient flow of traffic while maintaining safety. It's always something I wanted to learn more about.

Anyway, digression aside. You have to consider what is being asked here:
When this pandemic began we sacrificed the potential lifetime career earnings and social life of under 30s to help protect our larger society, the health system and in particular the very vulnerable cohorts. Many of these under 30 are at very low risk of severe consequences from COVID. Now, the vulnerable are getting protection we're going to ask the group that's sacrificed a hell of lot already to make even more unnecessary sacrifices in the sake of getting the economy going? It doesn't really stack up. Thanks for all your sacrifices so far now we just need you to make completely unnecessary sacrifices that may potentially adversely impact your own health.

I'm not sure we can consider that ethical.
Everything would be different if there were no alternatives to the viral vectors. There are.

bodhrandude wrote: »

That's odd, the receptionist at my GP explained it better, Cohort 4 is cases of people with respiratory diseases that need regularly to be treated in hospitals during the year. My sister's example being she needs to use a nebuliser and attends hospital appointments once a month to get fusion treatment. Whilst I'm in Cohort 7 who requires heavy duty inhalers but I'm not required to attend hospital for treatments. So I think your GP is winding you up, you should be in 7 if you have a respiratory disease and require inhalers. Its absolutely nuts, the situation.

The description given for respiratory patients in cohort 7 is:
Other chronic respiratory disease, for example: stable cystic fibrosis, severe asthma (continuous or repeated use of systemic corticosteroids), moderate COPD.

Asthma patients are only in cohort 7 if they require oral steroids on a regular basis, using an inhaler doesn't qualify you.

I'm beginning to think most of this confusion is down to GP surgery staff not understanding the word systemic

freshpopcorn wrote: »

I’m not sure if this have being covered in this thread.
I’m just wondering what’s the story with a Health center I know giving out vaccines to people.
Their 20’s -50’s whilst others who’d be more vulnerable aren’t vaccinated yet.
I know they maybe a few vaccines left over but I know of a good few people who’ve being called now.
The only link seems to be they are private patients(No medical card).
Professions, etc are all different.

You don’t know if the people in their 20s-50s aren’t more vulnerable. If by people who are more vulnerable you mean those 50 - 69, they’re being done in MVCs.

ShineOn7 wrote: »

Me and you have agreed on absolutely fcuk all on here in the last year, but I absolutely hope you get vaccinated in Cohort 7 somehow

If memory serves you're quite young, so if you don't get one in Cohort 7 you'll be one of the last in the queue

And no one with asthma should be that far down the queue

I’m in the same situation as ACE and inclined to agree with you. The country will reopen and cohort 7 will be left in the dust as case numbers rise, it’s madness and very depressing.

AdamD wrote: »

I'm probably being naive here but would it not be logistically easier for GPs to just refer anyone who possibly comes into group 7, instead of fully investigating each case and then pulling out of the system to due to it being too time constraining? Having too many people bunched into group 7 would surely have minimal negative impact on the rollout versus too few..

Supply issues.

eeepaulo wrote: »

Do people get symptoms (headache, achy, hangover type feelings) after the second jab or is it only the first?

I think in some cases people get symptoms from the first shot of AZ whilst folk who get Pfizer get symptoms from the second shot.

sd1999 wrote: »

You don’t know if the people in their 20s-50s aren’t more vulnerable. If by people who are more vulnerable you mean those 50 - 69, they’re being done in MVCs.

I’ve spoken to a nice few of them, even related to them and they were all shocked to get the phone call. Some haven’t being to the Dr in years nearly.
One even said when they were waiting in the queue they were having a chat and they couldn’t figure it out.

bodhrandude wrote: »

That's odd, the receptionist at my GP explained it better, Cohort 4 is cases of people with respiratory diseases that need regularly to be treated in hospitals during the year. My sister's example being she needs to use a nebuliser and attends hospital appointments once a month to get fusion treatment. Whilst I'm in Cohort 7 who requires heavy duty inhalers but I'm not required to attend hospital for treatments. So I think your GP is winding you up, you should be in 7 if you have a respiratory disease and require inhalers. Its absolutely nuts, the situation.

Regarding the text I got, the requirements for category 4 in terms of chronic respiratory disease is where a patient is on home oxygen, pre or post transplantation or with a hospital admission related to disease in the past year.

Category 7 is then other chronic respiratory disease like stable CS, severe asthma which requires continuous or repeated use of systemic corticosteroids and so on.

Apogee wrote: »

The remainder of the 2nd doses for Cohort 1 seems to be slow in starting? We had ~104k first doses and ~82k second doses since end of March:




Yet we're still stuck at ~84k second doses into May?

16 week gap between doses of AZ.

Russman wrote: »

Ahh come on, that's not even an apples to oranges comparison.
We can, hopefully, largely mitigate our potential deaths from the viral vector vaccines with a bit of rejigging of the scheduled rollout. A few weeks delay or some unused vaccines isn't the end of the world, its not ideal of course, and nobody anywhere wants this to go on longer than it has to, but we can't completely be fixated on speed to the detriment of safety.
I have no idea what level of risk or percentage fatalities etc with vaccines are deemed acceptable by the medical community, or what constitutes "safety", but I do think we have to trust their judgement.

It is the same comparison.

We make a tradeoff in road deaths vs the economic cost of lowering speed limits. We can reduce road deaths to zero if we wanted zero risk.

Similarly with vaccines. Someone has made a decision on the tradeoff of the speed of vaccine rollout vs the possible health risks of side-effects.

I see you mention "a few weeks delay" as being somehow trivial. I don't think it is, particularly to the businesses who will not be able to reopen and the people who will go unvaccinated in the meantime. Those of us who can WFH or are in the public sector can tolerate an extra few weeks of lockdown, but there is 25% of the population currently unemployed and they seem to me to have been largely forgotten about.

Bubbaclaus wrote: »

Which is presumably 99% of people that poster is querying.

No idea, just pointing out it's been reset to 12 weeks since we started the over 60s.

bodun wrote: »

Hopefully after all this is over the HSE will get serious about a national EPR

Why do you think there is a better chance when this is over?
Most of the HSE had less to do during the past 18 months than at any other time previously.

revelman wrote: »

Breaking news in German media: Germany’s Sitiko committee (equivalent to our NIAC) is to recommend that J&J be given to over 60s only. It might be possible for younger people to take it only if they get a “declaration” from a doctor.

The German government is apparently ignoring their recommendations for AZ, so I would expect the same for J&J. https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-germany-opens-up-astrazeneca-covid-vaccines-for-all-adults/a-57453351