This was my post at the end of Feb, Boris Johnson and other western leaders will never do this and by doing it half heatedly in late March last year they squandered their opportunity the people won't let them do that or more again. China coronavirus spread is accelerating, Xi Jinping warns.
Me and the 8yo are waiting to see what Boris has to say at 8pm. If he announces the shutting of primary schools my daughter stays at home and I don’t go to work in a rerun of spring of last year.
Mid Feb, not good enough, end of April would be a better target. Sorry that you will be restricted again John but my view now is that our age group won't see a chance of vaccination till April and no guarantee of getting the second dose in time, I won't be able to see my kids till Christmas maybe not even then. And we still don't know how long the vaccine will work for. Edit: by mid Feb I mean their target to reopen schools.
This is the trouble right now. Everyone views it from their own standpoint. We are all claiming to be first in the queue for the vaccine, for example. The government, whoever they are have to carve their way through that. It reminds me of the hot air balloon scenario where they have to deballast and everybody claims to be the one that needs to stay on board while the others get thrown over the side.
I've got a valid reason to be seen as more vulnerable, I've had two infections in my fistula over Christmas, yes better controlled than in the past but more frequent, but no one is going to recognise that hence my pessimism. He (Johnson) specifically stated the 4 most vulnerable groups as being vaccinated by mid Feb, that's not going to happen, they need to ramp up to more than 2 million vaccinations a week to reach that target and they won't succeed, and to do it properly you really need 4 million vaccinations a week about a fortnight from now (second dose) but they won't do that. Also most will get the Astra Zeneca because of the easier logistics, but what are they getting 50% first dose and 100% second or 100% first dose and 100% second, the 100/100 is only proved 70% effective and the trial was basically broken by the accidental 50/100 pattern which was not a large enough sample to genuinely state that it did get to 90% protection. And single dose Astra-Zeneca was only rated at 50% protection and all protection is delayed to three to four weeks after the initial shot anyway. It's a shambles, if they at least lockdown hard for even 10 weeks we would get back to something like the situation in the summer, and 16 weeks would give us a summer.
Vaccinate front line essential staff, vaccinate teachers, vaccinate delivery and logistics staff who have to travel to do their job, vaccinate the military, then the vulnerable, then the elderly in descending age order, we in the 60 to 69 age group will still be waiting in April and I don't mind too much as long as they enact a plan like that and actually do it properly.
There is obviously mixed opinion on this like anything else. It’s my belief that they simply vaccinate the most vulnerable first whoever they might be. Since it’s a virus that picks on the metabolically weak. I agree with Boris on this one. And get on it sharpish. Now the children are at home, vaccinating teachers would be a waste of a shot when there are more needy people about.
Teachers still have to teach children of essential workers in person, and if you vaccinate them now you don't have staff shortages when kids finally start to get back to school. There are half a million teachers in England, roughly, they are one of the professions who have to mix with many in confined spaces in order to do their jobs, the same logic would apply to all those who have to mix over extended periods of time with large numbers of individuals. Yeah we don't know if vaccination will prevent a person spreading the virus but it probably will and it will probably do that better in younger people, also note that a lot of those teachers will be in older age brackets anyway, my daughter's mum Shona is the same age as me and is a teacher the same as our daughter. They should be vaccinating the potential vectors as a way to stop or reduce transmission as a priority, most front line essential staff are in similar environments to teachers and moving between many vulnerable people, in total in the NHS there are about 1.5 million people employed. The virus does not pick on anyone, people get infected by contact with other people who were infected earlier, break the chain, if you have the population locked down then vaccinating the mobile population achieves a kind of limited immunity in that mobile population, like herd. Once you have that you can then start to vaccinate the elderly and work down gradually through the age groups gradually allowing more and more people back to a working environment. Get the transmission rate down as fast as possible get the case count down as fast as possible and you reduce the chances of an opportunist mutation. The news we got tonight has blown my employers plans out of the water, we won't be back in the office in April we will be lucky if we get back in August.
They don’t have nearly as many kids to look after and don’t teach. Distancing becomes less of a problem. They simply set them play activities and stand by. Some work from home anyway. I wouldn’t put them at the top of my list as there are far more people ahead of them. I think everyone can argue their case, just like the balloon ballast scenario but someone has to make a decision and I will go with the one in place. Speed is off the essence. Teachers will get done but need to wait their turn. Any teachers that are vulnerable should stay at home. Locking down and vaccinating the vulnerable as a matter of priority is the most sensible way ahead. Not ideal I know but no other solution is (except of course improving our immune systems).
heres a scenario. my wife is registered manager of a nearby care home--20 residents. one of the 2 cooks rang in today --on her mobile phone while she was still in bed--to inform her he was self isolating at home because his wife is now showing symptoms.: which--whilst it presents my wife with a problem--it is the correct course of action. ok--so supposing most of the staff ring in with the same situation? At what point does the care home become unmanageable ? What happens then ? These places are run with the minimum staff they can get away with--the difference between profit and ruin is very finely balanced.
Teachers were just one group in a list, I had reasons for mentioning each group all related to vectors of transmission, front line NHS staff need to be protected they interact with a huge number of people, do you think it makes sense for an infected asymptomatic nurse to be giving vaccinations to thousands of vulnerable individuals? I suggested the military as you could likely get a lot of them trained up to vaccinate people that makes them front line too. Delivery and logistics staff, there is a lot of reason to believe that fomite transmission can be a major problem, if logistics people are vaccinated there is a lower chance of objects they handle carrying infection from their handling, Fomites are an issue inside hospitals too so really everyone from the porters to the kitchen staff and all the way up should be considered front line.
This from Independent Sage. IndependentSAGE-comment-on-proposal-to-reschedule-second-dose.pdf edit: I had "not" instead of "now" in the next sentence that was an error. They conclude that the situation is now so desperate that the 12 weeks option is now preferred even if it is an experiment. Dr Anthony Fauci says US will not delay second doses of Covid vaccine | Coronavirus | The Guardian
Well Malcolm they only had 10 months to plan but nobody bothered and now they are scrambling around putting ideas on the back of an envelope. Read my post before this one, it's worth reading all of it.
