Generic Virus Thread

[Lichfield Dean]

6 minutes ago, sidcow said:

There is no supply of the alternatives though, or at least not enough to prevent more deaths than the clots ever will.   By not giving it you are deliberately killing MORE people than by giving it.

Agree completely if you can give AZ or another in equal numbers with no delay then yes, give the alternative.  But in Europe there is a third wave pummelling through them because there are not enough alternatives.  A couple of days ago France had 66,000 new cases, their average weekly cases is 37,000 and growing every day.  Their deaths WILL be over 1,000 a day in a week or 2 compared to our probably single figures or early teens by then.

The reason for that is because they haven't had enough vaccinations to suppress the virus and prevent spread or to save people who catch it.  We have. 

There are alternatives. Why do you say there aren't?

I'm talking about this country. Plenty of people have been given other makes of vaccine, just distribute them slightly differently from now on. Or are you saying there are no Pfizer or moderna or any other vaccines available?

[cheltenham_villa]

How do the roll out stats compare across the different vaccines? I assume it possible that other vaccines have similar rare side effects but the low level of roll out means we havent seen them yet. 

 

[OutByEaster?]

13 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Do you buy a lottery ticket thinking you are really likely to win it?

Every time!

(The comment was tongue in cheek - although the first dose did knock me about a bit)

[sidcow]

43 minutes ago, Lichfield Dean said:

There are alternatives. Why do you say there aren't?

I'm talking about this country. Plenty of people have been given other makes of vaccine, just distribute them slightly differently from now on. Or are you saying there are no Pfizer or moderna or any other vaccines available?

I was mainly talking about Europe, but it still applies here albeit to a lesser extent as we've already vaccinated so many.

The vaccination programme has slowed down a lot here, and that is down to a current interruption to the AstraZeneca vaccine.   So people will now be catching and dying from Coronavirus in the UK who wouldn't if we were still steaming ahead with AstraZeneca.   Certainly more than one in 2.5m anyway.

But Europe has a chronic shortage of Vaccines.  Yes Modena and Pfizer are around but nowhere near enough of them.   I thought I made the clear in my original post.  The EU have been hammering Pfizer about their slow supply as much as they have AstraZeneca.  They just cannot get enough of any shots in arms to prevent the tidal wave of new virus cases currently hitting.

Edited April 7, 2021 by sidcow

[KenjiOgiwara]

57 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I don't understand your point?

No surprise there.

You tried to paint the picture the EU had some agenda towards the AZ vaccine. Was never the case. It's just proven to be of less quality than the alternatives. Guess I could add some screen shots of the relevant posts, but I assume you remember what you wrote.

I actually said very early I could understand the ethical argument of proceeding vaccinations despite it was killing people. It even was said in the post I initially quoted you on. I just said I personally would never take it.

So the laughing smileys are sincere. You just don't make any sense and your defensive stance on a subpar vaccine is well funny.

But good news for you though! I am pretty sure the vaccines you were in shortage of soon won't be!

[sidcow]

33 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

No surprise there.

You tried to paint the picture the EU had some agenda towards the AZ vaccine. Was never the case. It's just proven to be of less quality than the alternatives. Guess I could add some screen shots of the relevant posts, but I assume you remember what you wrote.

I actually said very early I could understand the ethical argument of proceeding vaccinations despite it was killing people. It even was said in the post I initially quoted you on. I just said I personally would never take it.

So the laughing smileys are sincere. You just don't make any sense and your defensive stance on a subpar vaccine is well funny.

But good news for you though! I am pretty sure the vaccines you were in shortage of soon won't be!

The sub par vaccine has saved thousands of lives, estimated at 6,000 so far in the UK.  Not exactly sub par. 

Unfortunately it's not been given the chance to save tens of thousands of lives across Europe and probably won't now despite being available for people to take.  Tens of thousands who would otherwise be alive and enjoying life. 

It's terribly sad how many will now die. No medicine is 100% save.  Coronavirus is massively dangerous. 

Enjoy your "victory" as you clearly see it. Well done you. 

Edited April 7, 2021 by sidcow

[chrisp65]

36 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

No surprise there.

You tried to paint the picture the EU had some agenda towards the AZ vaccine. Was never the case. It's just proven to be of less quality than the alternatives. Guess I could add some screen shots of the relevant posts, but I assume you remember what you wrote.

I actually said very early I could understand the ethical argument of proceeding vaccinations despite it was killing people. It even was said in the post I initially quoted you on. I just said I personally would never take it.

So the laughing smileys are sincere. You just don't make any sense and your defensive stance on a subpar vaccine is well funny.

But good news for you though! I am pretty sure the vaccines you were in shortage of soon won't be!

There’s a good vaccine, that exists.

There are possibly better vaccines that are in woefully short supply.

Criticising the ‘good’ vaccine and going slow on every aspect of vaccine roll out is a hell of a weird gloating point.

I think you’re way off.

[sidcow]

Mate of mine has just posted on our WhatsApp group "You're more likely to meet someone who finds Mrs Brown's Boys funny than die of a blood clot after taking the AZ vaccine" 

[sidcow]

Just for a bit of perspective 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-56659036

AZ vaccine: How do you weigh up the risks and benefits?

Quote

Before weighing up the risks and benefits, the first question is “how rare”?

Based on today’s data from the UK regulator, you might expect a one-in-a-million chance of a fatal clot after vaccination.

That’s roughly the same as your chance of getting murdered in the next month or the additional risk of dying that driving 250 miles gives you.

And that’s why the regulators are describing it as “very rare”.

We don't know enough to be able to plug data into a calculator and get a simple, exact answer tailored to you.

But for anyone at relatively high risk of catching coronavirus or at higher risk of dying if they do catch it, the benefits outstrip the risks pretty clearly.

As England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty says “the closer you get to someone who's right down at 20, and otherwise blameless in their health, the more you have to think through these really very rare side effects”.

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by sidcow

[Seat68]

i remember a few years back, 10 or more @Stevo985 balked at a prediction of mine. I **** sat on it for an entire season and brought it up at the close. Jubilant at the end of the season. Sadly no one joined in my jubilation as it really did not **** matter. 
No one is certain about this covid. No one so we take the best of what we have. If that is AZ with a tiny risk, the individual needs to weigh it up. 

Edited April 7, 2021 by Seat68

[TB]

Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist, and this has possibly been taken into consideration by those who are. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, though. Purely from a layman's perspective, due to the relatively low numbers of vaccine doses available (you had a head start - well done), at least here in Norway (and probably in the rest of mainland Europe) the two priority groups that has been vaccinated are the elderly and the healthcare workers. IIRC, most of the patients affected by blood clots in Europe after vaccination were young nurses. Women likely to use contraceptives.

I believe it's generally accepted that the p-pill (some brands more so than others) heighten the risk of blood clots. A tiny bit. Could the Oxford/AZ vaccine be perfectly safe on its own, but in some rare cases (in combination with a high-risk pill) cause blood clots?

I'm male, I'm 60+. They're working on getting the 74-65 age range vaccinated in my area, which has received extra vaccine doses due to the number of infections. I wouldn't hesitate to accept an AZ jab.

[sidcow]

5 minutes ago, TB said:

Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist, and this has possibly been taken into consideration by those who are. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, though. Purely from a layman's perspective, due to the relatively low numbers of vaccine doses available (you had a head start - well done), at least here in Norway (and probably in the rest of mainland Europe) the two priority groups that has been vaccinated are the elderly and the healthcare workers. IIRC, most of the patients affected by blood clots in Europe after vaccination were young nurses. Women likely to use contraceptives.

I believe it's generally accepted that the p-pill (some brands more so than others) heighten the risk of blood clots. A tiny bit. Could the Oxford/AZ vaccine be perfectly safe on its own, but in some rare cases (in combination with a high-risk pill) cause blood clots?

I'm male, I'm 60+. They're working on getting the 74-65 age range vaccinated in my area, which has received extra vaccine doses due to the number of infections. I wouldn't hesitate to accept an AZ jab.

No, the Norway nurses thing was an anomaly.  In the UK the clots have been across a broad age range and includes men, though a higher number of women have been affected but that could just be coincidence. 

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by sidcow

[TB]

7 minutes ago, sidcow said:

No, the Norway nurses thing was an anomaly.  In the UK the clots have been across a broad age range and includes men, though a higher number of women have been affected but that could just be coincidence.

If you say so. The reports in Scandinavia were about most cases being young nurses. As I said, I'm not a scientist. Just a hunch.

Edit: but I still think a fair comparison may only be made when we've caught up with you in which age ranges have been vaccinated.)

Edited April 7, 2021 by TB

[mjmooney]

17 minutes ago, TB said:

most of the patients affected by blood clots in Europe after vaccination were young nurses. Women likely to use contraceptives.

First thing I thought of - is this a classic case of mistaking correlation for causation? When it's a specific demographic that's being affected, look at what other factors could be in play that could cause problems in combination with the vaccine. My initial guess was recreational drugs, but your suggestion of oral contraceptives sounds like an even stronger possibility - especially given their known links to blood clotting. Easy to check up on, too. I wonder if they have? 

Edited April 7, 2021 by mjmooney

[TB]

1 minute ago, mjmooney said:

First thing I thought of - is this a classic case of mistaking correlation for causation. When it's a specific demographic that's being affected, look at what other factors could be in play that could cause problems in combination with the vaccine. My initial guess was recreational drugs, but your suggestion of oral contraceptives sounds like an even stronger possibility. Easy to check up on, too. I wonder if they have? 

I'd say they *should* have. I'd like to see a statistical breakdown on type of contraceptives - if any. Reports I've seen after the millions of vaccine jabs in the UK said the rate of blood clots victims was normal, statistically. But then, you've managed to vaccinate a much larger part of the population, whereas we've just managed to jab the folks in care homes, the 75+ and the health workers. In Scandinavia (and the Netherlands?) it seems to be just <60 female health workers affected.

[LondonLax]

At least the discussion has moved on from it all being an EU conspiracy because they hate the ‘British vaccine’...

[Stevo985]

2 hours ago, Seat68 said:

i remember a few years back, 10 or more @Stevo985 balked at a prediction of mine. I **** sat on it for an entire season and brought it up at the close. Jubilant at the end of the season. Sadly no one joined in my jubilation as it really did not **** matter. 

I have no recollection of this but I'd love to know more  

Edit: on a similar subject though, after the 2008 olympics I predicted on here that due to Team GB's improvements, and the 2012 games being on home soil, that Great Britain would finish ahead of Russia in the medal table fro the 2012 olympics and got laughed at. Again, nobody cared in 2012 when I was right. But I remembered...  

Edited April 7, 2021 by Stevo985

[bickster]

 

[brommy]

23 hours ago, sidcow said:

I was mainly talking about Europe, but it still applies here albeit to a lesser extent as we've already vaccinated so many.

The vaccination programme has slowed down a lot here, and that is down to a current interruption to the AstraZeneca vaccine.   So people will now be catching and dying from Coronavirus in the UK who wouldn't if we were still steaming ahead with AstraZeneca.   Certainly more than one in 2.5m anyway.

But Europe has a chronic shortage of Vaccines.  Yes Modena and Pfizer are around but nowhere near enough of them.   I thought I made the clear in my original post.  The EU have been hammering Pfizer about their slow supply as much as they have AstraZeneca.  They just cannot get enough of any shots in arms to prevent the tidal wave of new virus cases currently hitting.

Reading the text in bold above, I was unsure whether the very recent slowdown was due to the AZ issue. However, looking at yesterday’s vaccination of just over half a million people (approximately 100k first doses and 408k second doses), it appears the recent few days’ slowdown was mostly due to the Easter break. Either that or the UK was fortunate that the temporary AZ hiccup coincided with understandably less staff and volunteers available over Easter.

There’s a massive time difference in reaching the UK’s vaccination goal between the Easter Sunday low of 96k doses and the high to date of 844k daily doses (20th March). Hopefully the vaccination programme will continue with a more than decent half a million plus per day, like yesterday did.

[sidcow]

40 minutes ago, brommy said:

Reading the text in bold above, I was unsure whether the very recent slowdown was due to the AZ issue. However, looking at yesterday’s vaccination of just over half a million people (approximately 100k first doses and 408k second doses), it appears the recent few days’ slowdown was mostly due to the Easter break. Either that or the UK was fortunate that the temporary AZ hiccup coincided with understandably less staff and volunteers available over Easter.

There’s a massive time difference in reaching the UK’s vaccination goal between the Easter Sunday low of 96k doses and the high to date of 844k daily doses (20th March). Hopefully the vaccination programme will continue with a more than decent half a million plus per day, like yesterday did.

I wasn't talking about the last few days, the whole of April is going to be a lot lower than they were hoping because of 5m of doses which were due to arrive from India late March which India instead kept for themselves and there was something else about a batch that was being re-checked.  There was due to be an unplanned slowdown all through April which is why they are doing such small numbers of first doses and had stopped calling under 50's till May.  Without that they would currently be steaming through first shots on the 40-50 age group.

Edited April 8, 2021 by sidcow