Generic Virus Thread

[Davkaus]

30 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

 

One small win for being outside the EU, I’m surprised more isn’t being made of it.

We know we could have approved the vaccine earlier, we did did, while remaining in the EU.

Is there any reason we couldn't have also procured the vaccine independently? I'd think not?

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, darrenm said:

It seems that the EU has fallen behind on procurement because of bureaucracy.

Certainly everything I've seen seems to point towards that. 

[sidcow]

12 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

We know we could have approved the vaccine earlier, we did did, while remaining in the EU.

Is there any reason we couldn't have also procured the vaccine independently? I'd think not?

You would think there would be other countries within the EU who would have done that if they could though. None seem to. 

We did officially leave the EU last year, it's the transition with trading rules which has just ended. 

[Davkaus]

Just now, sidcow said:

You would think there would be other countries within the EU who would have done that if they could though. None seem to. 

 

They didn't think it was worth the risk, so didn't. As it turns out, it's worked out quite well, so I'll give our government praise where it's due. Even our own government admit that they could have done exactly as they did if we'd remained in the EU though, as we've been discussing in the Brexit thread. I don't want to sound rude, but it's not a matter of speculation, it's a matter of fact. 

[Xann]

Dealing with Covid isn't about A vaccine, it's about vaccineS and continued management.

This is how we operate here. 

Quote

 

A former government adviser who brokered a bungled £250 million PPE contract has used an obscure change in company status to avoid having to disclose details of his earnings.

Andrew Mills, who served as an unpaid adviser to the Board of Trade, chaired by Liz Truss, secured a deal between the government and the investment company Ayanda Capital for millions of masks.

The NHS subsequently deemed millions of those masks worth £155 million unusable for the intended use because they were supplied with ear loops rather than head straps. Ayanda has blamed government officials for the mistake and said it supplied masks to the specification agreed.

 

Times

[TrentVilla]

3 hours ago, sidcow said:

Pfizer and AZ have had a year to prepare for this knowing the importance of vaccine rollout to saving lives, knowing exactly what they need to do.  It's a real shit show that within a month of them actually getting their product into people's arms they both decide to do or find something that causes MAJOR interruptions to supply. 

I can understand some minor teething troubles but these are very major supply issues. 

Mind you I'm equally amazed that governments haven't been all over their supply plans trying to spot issues in advance.  This is mankind's most difficult problem, it's staggering that both private conglomerates and public authorities haven't anticipated any of these problems. 

Struggling with this to be honest.

How have they had a year to prepare? They didn’t have a working vaccine a year ago, they didn’t know if one could even be found and they certainly didn’t know they would have one approved, where they would be in the race to do so or what orders they would receive. 

[TrentVilla]

22 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

They didn't think it was worth the risk, so didn't. As it turns out, it's worked out quite well, so I'll give our government praise where it's due. Even our own government admit that they could have done exactly as they did if we'd remained in the EU though, as we've been discussing in the Brexit thread. I don't want to sound rude, but it's not a matter of speculation, it's a matter of fact. 

Yes they could have done it is less certain that it would have done, in fact I think it is highly unlikely we would have done because like other nations have been we would have probably been adverse to the risk.

 

[HanoiVillan]

26 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

Struggling with this to be honest.

How have they had a year to prepare? They didn’t have a working vaccine a year ago, they didn’t know if one could even be found and they certainly didn’t know they would have one approved, where they would be in the race to do so or what orders they would receive. 

I don't think the bolded is right (although it depends how strict we are about 'exactly a year' I guess); as I understand it it took very little time at all to create the vaccines using available technology, and there was little difficulty in doing so; the time was the challenge of testing them rather than creating them. And following on from that - and bearing in mind the unprecedented urgent need for these vaccines - there was never much doubt that they would be approved (they would probably have been approved even if they were much less effective than they are, since we have no practical alternative).

[bickster]

6 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I don't think the bolded is right (although it depends how strict we are about 'exactly a year' I guess); as I understand it it took very little time at all to create the vaccines using available technology, and there was little difficulty in doing so; the time was the challenge of testing them rather than creating them. And following on from that - and bearing in mind the unprecedented urgent need for these vaccines - there was never much doubt that they would be approved (they would probably have been approved even if they were much less effective than they are, since we have no practical alternative).

Not true of Pfizer or Moderna, both are RNA vaccines and both are the first to ever be licenced for use on humans, none of the previous RNA vaccines have ever been licenced

[ml1dch]

56 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

Struggling with this to be honest.

How have they had a year to prepare? They didn’t have a working vaccine a year ago, they didn’t know if one could even be found and they certainly didn’t know they would have one approved, where they would be in the race to do so or what orders they would receive. 

They did - it's the trials that then took the time.

Quote

You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian generosity that resulted in China’s Yong-Zhen Zhang’s being temporarily forced out of his lab. In Massachusetts, the Moderna vaccine design took all of one weekend. It was completed before China had even acknowledged that the disease could be transmitted from human to human, more than a week before the first confirmed coronavirus case in the United States. By the time the first American death was announced a month later, the vaccine had already been manufactured and shipped to the National Institutes of Health for the beginning of its Phase I clinical trial. This is — as the country and the world are rightly celebrating — the fastest timeline of development in the history of vaccines

The whole article is a good read.

[villakram]

The 7 day running average is ~1.7million per week, for those in the US getting the vaccine now.

It always hard to see when in the eye of the storm, but the roll-out doesn't seems to be going any great deal worse or better than one could expect. Pretty much all of those who need it will have been done by April. Imagination land thinking has people expecting something massively better than this.

[HanoiVillan]

28 minutes ago, bickster said:

Not true of Pfizer or Moderna, both are RNA vaccines and both are the first to ever be licenced for use on humans, none of the previous RNA vaccines have ever been licenced

Sure, but the technology was in existence by spring 2020.

[sidcow]

It's all a bit arbitrary arguing about if / when vaccines existed or were approved. 

I dont believe a major corporation should wait until they've got the nod before they pay any attention to how they are going to manufacture and ship enormous quantities of any product. 

There should have been robust plans in place and checks on their infrastructure to see what was possible and what was needed. 

Particularly when they've accepted orders with delivery dates.  They aren't selling pairs of socks here, they're selling vastly important drugs. 

Edited January 26, 2021 by sidcow

[TrentVilla]

22 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

They did - it's the trials that then took the time.

The whole article is a good read.

My wording is poor there admittedly, I should have said a vaccine that they knew would go into production. It is unreasonable to expect companies to have ramped up production capability 12 months ago for orders that may never have come.

[TrentVilla]

1 minute ago, sidcow said:

It's all a bit arbitrary arguing about if / when vaccines existed or were approved. 

I dont believe a major corporation should wait until they've got the nod before they pay any attention to how they are going to manufacture and ship enormous quantities of any product. 

There should have been robust plans in place and checks on their infrastructure to see what was possible and what was needed. 

Particularly when they've accepted orders with delivery dates.  They aren't selling pairs of socks here, they're selling vastly important drugs. 

Then I think that is completely unrealistic. How exactly are they supposed to plan and put in means of production for as yet unplaced orders?

Have they said they won’t meet their orders? If they have I’ve not seen that. What I saw was production would be slowed in order to upgrade and ultimately produce quicker.

 

[sidcow]

Todays figures seem to be late.  Not sure if that's because there is a press conference from Bozza later or because Tuesday is always a big catch up.  Was it last Tuesday they were late as well?

[darrenm]

Just now, sidcow said:

Todays figures seem to be late.  Not sure if that's because there is a press conference from Bozza later or because Tuesday is always a big catch up.  Was it last Tuesday they were late as well?

I was wondering that. Was just checking and I reckon it is because of the PC. Makes me wonder if there's some context to be had. Sudden decrease with a warning to keep taking it seriously hopefully. 

[darrenm]

20 minutes ago, darrenm said:

I was wondering that. Was just checking and I reckon it is because of the PC. Makes me wonder if there's some context to be had. Sudden decrease with a warning to keep taking it seriously hopefully. 

Or the opposite

[AVFCDAN]

1600 dead, wow.

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by AVFCDAN

[trekka]

The number of deaths is utterly heartbreaking.  

This is a good visual dashboard by the way for anyone interested (Travelling Tabby UK Coronavirus Tracker).