27 ms·

In terms of rollout. UK is the ideal country to be the first: 1. Heavily impacted by Covid-19. 2. Centralised health care system makes it easier to compare re

In terms of rollout. UK is the ideal country to be the first: 1. Heavily impacted by Covid-19. 2. Centralised health care system makes it easier to compare results and efficiency. E.g. it's UK which figured out that dexamethasone is efficient against Covid https://www.who.int/news/item/16-06-2020-who-welcomes-preliminary-results-about-dexamethasone-use-in-treating-critically-ill-covid-19-patients https://www.who.int/news/item/16-06-2020-who-welcomes-prelim... 3. Developed country with great logistics.

WanderPanda 6y ago
Happy beta testing to all Brits then!
- simonbarker87 6y ago
  My 85 year old grandparents are excited, they get to hold their great grand children again. They’d be first in line if they could be.
  - vertis 6y ago
    Aside from hospital workers they're likely to be pretty high on the list, if my understanding is correct.
    - refurb 6y ago
      The FDA already recommended (it's not binding) that front-line healthcare workers and seniors in long-term care are the first wave of 20M people (40M doses). That will take until February or so to complete.
    - newguy1234 6y ago
      Heard it was something like this: 1. Long-term care residents/staff 2. Hospital workers 3. Anyone 85+ years old.
      - boyband6666 6y ago
        So in the UK we have a really good set of expert bodies that put forward reccomendations on these things, the JCVI being the vaccines body. They are every bit as good as the current government are terrible. Priority ranking is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-for-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-advice-from-the-jcvi-25-september-2020/jcvi-updated-interim-advice-on-priority-groups-for-covid-19-vaccination https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-f... Though this is generic and should change depending on the results on vaccine trials (should there be evidence of differential effectiveness).
      - mystcb 6y ago
        UK Gov originally published this as the priority interim list [1] - * older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers * all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers * all those 75 years of age and over * all those 70 years of age and over * all those 65 years of age and over * high-risk adults under 65 years of age * moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age * all those 60 years of age and over * all those 55 years of age and over * all those 50 years of age and over * rest of the population (priority to be determined) [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-for-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-advice-from-the-jcvi-25-september-2020/jcvi-updated-interim-advice-on-priority-groups-for-covid-19-vaccination#vaccine-priority-groups-interim-advice https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-f...
        ulrikrasmussen 6y ago
        In Denmark where I live, a large proportion of infected people are age 20-29, and I wonder if it would make sense to vaccinate them first when you get to "rest of the population". Even though they have a smaller risk of getting seriously ill, that could be an effective way to lower transmission. That is: 1. Immunize the age group that is dominating in the hospitalization statistics, then 2. Immunize the age group is accounting for the majority of transmission, then 3. Immunize the rest.
        tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  - lumberingjack 6y ago
    This one is the one that makes you very sick, are they really going to risk death for less perceived risk?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - avgDev 6y ago
    Oof my grandfather is 2000 miles away and 82. I am hoping we can visit him in 2021 safely, so he can meet his great grand child.
    - simonbarker87 6y ago
      I hope you can soon
- samcheng 6y ago
  The 'beta' test already happened. Tens of thousands of people have proven it safe and effective. Haven't you been following the news? Selfishly, I guess we should be happy that there is an anti-vaxxer sentiment; it means the rest of us will get our vaccines faster.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - J-dawg 6y ago
    Conversely, I am finding the reaction to anti-vaccine sentiment from some politicians to be pretty creepy. Already there is talk of compulsory vaccination or "vaccine passports". Labour (the UK opposition party) were even calling for spreading "misinformation" online to be illegal. I find this ridiculous considering the massive challenge we have ahead of us just to get the vaccine to the millions of people who desperately want it. Sure, if we get to the point where everyone who wants the vaccine has had it, and there are still people dying from COVID, then we can discuss illiberal measures to increase vaccine take-up. (I'd still be opposed to them). Getting worked up about this stuff when not a single person (outside of the trial groups) has been vaccinated yet just demonstrates our politicians' (on all sides) tendency towards authoritarianism.
    - spuz 6y ago
      I'm not sure I agree. The maths says that we need about 70% of the population to take the vaccine in order for it to no longer be a threat. We also have polling that says about 53% will refuse to take the vaccine. So we're already at the point where something else must be done such as adding incentives, a passport system or better advertising etc. OR continued lockdown measures and enforcement of mask wearing. It's not a theoretical problem we're already there. https://www.itv.com/news/2020-11-10/covid-vaccine-will-enough-of-the-population-get-immunised-to-get-rid-of-coronavirus https://www.itv.com/news/2020-11-10/covid-vaccine-will-enoug...
      - J-dawg 6y ago
        > The maths says that we need about 70% of the population to take the vaccine in order for it to no longer be a threat ...to no longer be a threat to an unvaccinated person. This isn't like the childhood vaccines, where we need herd immunity to protect the children who are too young to be vaccinated. Provided that everyone who wants the vaccine can get it, I don't see the problem with letting everyone else make their own decision. The current priority list of people is nowhere near 70% of the population anyway. Most people under 50 won't have the opportunity to be vaccinated for months. So this absolutely is a theoretical problem, at least for now. Given that Covid is such a mild disease for most young people, I predict that by the time the elderly and vulnerable have been vaccinated, this will be a non-issue anyway.
- 7952 6y ago
  Someone has to be. Happy for it to be me.
  - rovr138 6y ago
    Sincerely, thank you. The more people that get vaccinated, I think the easier it'll be to start vaccinating more and start getting back to normal fingers crossed
- ulfw 6y ago
  It's already been beta tested. That's the point of Phase 3 trials.
  - cafebabbe 6y ago
    *Shortened phase 3 trials.
    - wiz21c 6y ago
      I'd be happy to know how that shortening affects confidence in the vaccine.
      - NhanH 6y ago
        Efficacy confidence isn't affected, but side effect confidence is.
      - ineedasername 6y ago
        20% points seems to be the drop as the rapid approval process became a victim hyper-partisanship in the US. The push for a rapid approval has been viewed, by the left, as a political ploy by the right instead of a well-planned & scientifically supported approval process. Early polls about taking a vaccine showed much higher support for it before it was politicized. [0] Support dropped by 20%. Surprisingly, it dropped by about the same amount for both the political right & left, although support on the left started at a higher level. This may indicate that even people on the right were influenced by the perception of a too-rapid approval process. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/09/17/u-s-public-now-divided-over-whether-to-get-covid-19-vaccine/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/09/17/u-s-public-no...
    - ulfw 6y ago
      It's 40,000+ people. What else do you want?
  - NDizzle 6y ago
    More like a pre-alpha...
- dafoex 6y ago
  Beta testing is done, apparently people have been throwing themselves at the human trials.
mhh__ 6y ago
We also have a fairly old, fat, and alcoholic population so if this doesn't work we're probably not getting out of this lightly (even relative to where we are now)
- onion2k 6y ago
  I am not old.
  - ChrisRR 6y ago
    oldmanyellsatcloud.jpg
Toenex 6y ago
I suspect the bulk of the population will receive the 'Oxford' vaccine. It's still going through the approval process but the UK has ordered more of it. I believe the Pfizer vaccine is targeted to front line workers and the clinical vulnerable.
- SubiculumCode 6y ago
  Why? The 'Oxford' vaccine has been pretty shaky. Edit: source: https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-data-isnt-up-to-snuff/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-da...
  - rjtavares 6y ago
    Source? Latest news[1] seem to indicate it's effective. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55040635 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55040635
    - SubiculumCode 6y ago
      Potentially. [1]https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-data-isnt-up-to-snuff/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-da...
      - rjtavares 6y ago
        Thanks!
      - lbeltrame 6y ago
        There's another readout expected in the USA sooner or later, with a far larger cohort (30K people), but for the full/full dose regimen.
      - sweezyjeezy 6y ago
        We don't need the super-high efficacy numbers (>90%) that the other vaccines are reporting for this to stop the virus. Typical flu vaccines are ~ 50%, I think the Oxford vaccine's results show that they've achieved this.
afandian 6y ago
To your point 3, Belgium may well have great logistics but the UK government has knowingly undermined and compromised UK logistics (the whole industry is crying out) as part of their Brexit process. Maybe there are extraordinary arrangements being made for the vaccine, but it won't be because of a good prevailing open-market logistics situation. Edit: here's the Road Haulage Association warning of severe supply chain disruption https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54021421 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54021421 Edit 2, since responses are unexpected: > HMRC's assumption is that there'll be 11 million new customs declarations a year on goods going from GB to NI as of January 1 https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1334073058815074304 https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1334073058815074304
- djmobley 6y ago
  Your comment has nothing to do with the logistics of rolling out a mass vaccination programme, but how exactly have the UK government’s Brexit negotiations “undermined and compromised UK logistics”? Negotiations are ongoing to secure a trade deal with the EU once the transition period is over. The UK are also securing trade deals with other countries, including Canada and Japan. Both sides recognise failure to reach a deal, or to extend the transition period, would be damaging for both sides. Which is precisely why both sides are negotiating a deal to ensure that doesn’t happen... Am I missing something here?
  - afandian 6y ago
    The original comment said "3. Developed country with great logistics." Which I now realise I misread as "Developed in a country" (i.e. Belgium, where it's manufactured). An entirely different, erroneous, reading of the sentence. Therefore my comment addressed the nature of cross-channel shipping which authorities I respect have repeatedly warned about. It's too late to edit to add that clarification about the misreading. But that's what was missed. If the army steps in to provide logistics at a time of national crisis, that's great. But it's not what I would expect this government to do based on the recent historical evidence: We've been in a national crisis for a while and the government has routinely preferred to neglect public-sector expertise and go private in a vast array of public procurement. Much of it has been highly questionable judgment (ministers awarding contracts to friends with penalty clauses).
DanBC 6y ago
> Developed country with great logistics. Please don't under-estimate our ability to fuck this up, probably by giving the distribution contracts to a crony.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- apsec112 6y ago
  I'm sure the UK is in the top twenty countries in the world for logistics infrastructure. It's easy to read news stories about your country messing things up, and quietly not read foreign-language media about poorer countries messing things up a lot more by comparison, and get a biased perspective.
  - EliRivers 6y ago
    The infrastructure, absolutely. A serious road, rail and air network, lots of companies with lots of experience and all the right gear and so on. Where we fuck up is in the competency of the people in charge of awarding contracts. Be it Grayling giving millions of pounds to a ferry company with no ferries owned or leased, or indeed any experience at all with ferries (and, wonderfully, with a T&Cs on their website copy-pasted from a pizza delivery site). As a wonderful finale, the government was sued by EuroTunnel because they awarded the contract without going through the proper process (which, of course, would have meant that the drawbacks of a pizza delivery business offering ferries might have been identified); we gave millions to a Ferry company incapable of delivering anything, and then millions to an actual transport company in compensation for breaking the rules on tendering. Or be it KFC awarding their chicken distribution (despite warnings from people who knew) to a company with no experience in or facilities for cold food distribution, leading to KFC going literally out of business for a couple of weeks because they had no chicken in the stores. We Brits have a competent infrastructure and the ability for the people in charge to award contracts to entirely the wrong parts of it.
    - string 6y ago
      I know it's guaranteed internet points to deride the current government, and the ferry thing is/was despicable, but I think it's highly unlikely they're going to put KFC in charge of logistical operations for the vaccine rollout.
sussexby 6y ago
And we have a really good spreadsheet for tracking who's been infected /s
- justsomeuser 6y ago
  And also malware for taking distributed encrypted backups with excellent key hiding features.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  I know you are /s but just in case you didn't realise - the spreadsheet part was only on the export of the data from the tracking system (when it was sent to Gov).
FerretFred 6y ago
(3) errr.... Ok, apart from that, the ideal guinea-pigs would have been the House of Commons and The House of Lords. The former are ultimately replaceable by the electoral process, and the latter are equivalent to a Care Home, albeit taxpayer-funded and all the residents wear ermine-collared red gowns.
eplanit 6y ago
And probably all citizens will be required to be vaccinated.
- adventured 6y ago
  Boris Johnson just recently mentioned that that would not be the case, the vaccine will not be mandatory.
  - academia_hack 6y ago
    One of the best predictors so far for UK COVID policy has been to assume anything Boris Johnson rules out will be the exact thing that happens.
- Maxious 6y ago
  > Boris Johnson says he strongly urges everyone to be vaccinated (jabs rolling out next week) but says it is 'no part or ambition of this country to make vaccines mandatory - that's not how we do things.' https://twitter.com/latikambourke/status/1334106542480777216 https://twitter.com/latikambourke/status/1334106542480777216
- johnisgood 6y ago
  You are being down-voted, but our politicians are saying exactly this. Well, either you vaccinate yourself, or you have to remain at home. How they are going to enforce it? No clue. Perhaps proof of being vaccinated before entering Government buildings, or the workplace.
swalsh 6y ago
In a recent article about the Moderna vaccine, it was mentioned that the actual development only took 2 days.... and it was done in January! Given how short of a time it took to actually develop this thing, could we have drastically sped up this process by maybe being a bit more risky with the trials? At this point ~1.5 million people have died from the virus. I've really struggled with this knowledge that we've had a vaccine which it turns out is 95% effective for practically the entire course of the pandemic at at this point... and our conservative "moral" process was to let 1.5 million people die while we vet it.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  To be fair, a lot more than 1.5 million people could have died if there were delayed adverse affects of the vaccine and we'd already done a mass rollout. I think it's probably good that we put it through a proper trial process. Also, we'd still have had to wait for production ramp up which I believe has been done in parallel to the testing, so it may not have saved that much tie.
- simonh 6y ago
  There are 321 vaccine candidates under development as of September with about 30 in clinical trials. Throughout the year there were probably many, many hundreds or thousands more discarded at early stages of development and evaluation. How would you have selected this particular candidate over all the other possibilities that got dropped?
  - swalsh 6y ago
    I understand your point, I really wan't try to make some kind of moral criticism of the process. I realize it was developed for a reason. My question was more about the point that especially with this new mRNA process, we're going to be able to develop these things blazingly fast. But the process for approvals is still glacier slow (and this was already the SPED UP timeline). My question was more where is there room to speed this stuff up?
- Exmoor 6y ago
  Whether or not it would have been a good idea to loosen the approval process aside, accelerating it would likely not have had much of any effect on saving those lives. The bottleneck is production capacity. As I understand it Moderna and Pfizer/Biontech have both been building production capacity and creating vaccines as fast as possible, but have only now created enough to vaccinate a few tens of millions of people combined. If they had been approved in the summer, when they went to Phase III trials, they might have, perhaps, been able to turn out a few thousands vials a day which is not really enough to meaningfully impact the spread or death rates even if you were able to highly target high-risk groups.
sschueller 6y ago
4. Is an island that can be cut off incase of a zombie apocalypse...
- kitd 6y ago
  5. Equipped with pubs called "The Winchester"
  - throwaway98797 6y ago
    6. All pubs named World’s End
    - napier 6y ago
      7. Other countries can carry out a longitudinal study on outcomes in the UK post vaccine authorization; checking in on the situation 28 days later and 28 weeks later.
      - jonplackett 6y ago
        I didn't realise I was on reddit...?
        ducktective 6y ago
        Thank you kind stranger for the gold
        tubularhells 6y ago
        This place is a drop in replacement for r/asd.
        aspyct 6y ago
        Yeah uhm... Never been to /r/asd, and now I'm slightly afraid of checking it out, seeing as two comments have been deleted :D
stuartbman 6y ago
Re: point 2 While the healthcare is centralised, the data is not, and often poorly federated between a multitude of organisations. Scotland has unified this much more and is far better placed to monitor for efficacy and side effects.
- moneywoes 6y ago
  Didn't an agency store data and loss data due to using an old format of excel file
  - cian 6y ago
    Yes, they hit the legacy 65,000 row limit for .XLS files: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988
    - BurningFrog 6y ago
      As I read it, it was actually (and amazingly) a 65,000 column limit!
      - makomk 6y ago
        I'm pretty sure the "column limit" claim was a false online theory that just stuck around because we're in such a post-truth era that even the definition of post-truth is itself post-truth... The reputable news coverage all said it was the number of rows that was the problem.
        BurningFrog 6y ago
        Now that you mention it, the story does have that "too inherently viral to be true" smell.
dan-robertson 6y ago
Indeed logistics will matter as the vaccine needs to be transported at around -80°C. So let’s hope nothing happens which might cause delays in shipping from Belgium to the U.K. after 31st December.
tubularhells 6y ago
>3. Developed country with great logistics. Wait post Brexit to see if you change your mind about that one.

WanderPanda 6y ago

Happy beta testing to all Brits then!

simonbarker87 6y ago
My 85 year old grandparents are excited, they get to hold their great grand children again. They’d be first in line if they could be.
- vertis 6y ago
  Aside from hospital workers they're likely to be pretty high on the list, if my understanding is correct.
  - refurb 6y ago
    The FDA already recommended (it's not binding) that front-line healthcare workers and seniors in long-term care are the first wave of 20M people (40M doses). That will take until February or so to complete.
  - newguy1234 6y ago
    Heard it was something like this: 1. Long-term care residents/staff 2. Hospital workers 3. Anyone 85+ years old.
    - boyband6666 6y ago
      So in the UK we have a really good set of expert bodies that put forward reccomendations on these things, the JCVI being the vaccines body. They are every bit as good as the current government are terrible. Priority ranking is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-for-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-advice-from-the-jcvi-25-september-2020/jcvi-updated-interim-advice-on-priority-groups-for-covid-19-vaccination https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-f... Though this is generic and should change depending on the results on vaccine trials (should there be evidence of differential effectiveness).
    - mystcb 6y ago
      UK Gov originally published this as the priority interim list [1] - * older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers * all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers * all those 75 years of age and over * all those 70 years of age and over * all those 65 years of age and over * high-risk adults under 65 years of age * moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age * all those 60 years of age and over * all those 55 years of age and over * all those 50 years of age and over * rest of the population (priority to be determined) [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-for-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-advice-from-the-jcvi-25-september-2020/jcvi-updated-interim-advice-on-priority-groups-for-covid-19-vaccination#vaccine-priority-groups-interim-advice https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-f...
      - ulrikrasmussen 6y ago
        In Denmark where I live, a large proportion of infected people are age 20-29, and I wonder if it would make sense to vaccinate them first when you get to "rest of the population". Even though they have a smaller risk of getting seriously ill, that could be an effective way to lower transmission. That is: 1. Immunize the age group that is dominating in the hospitalization statistics, then 2. Immunize the age group is accounting for the majority of transmission, then 3. Immunize the rest.
        tonyedgecombe 6y ago
- lumberingjack 6y ago
  This one is the one that makes you very sick, are they really going to risk death for less perceived risk?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- avgDev 6y ago
  Oof my grandfather is 2000 miles away and 82. I am hoping we can visit him in 2021 safely, so he can meet his great grand child.
  - simonbarker87 6y ago
    I hope you can soon
samcheng 6y ago
The 'beta' test already happened. Tens of thousands of people have proven it safe and effective. Haven't you been following the news? Selfishly, I guess we should be happy that there is an anti-vaxxer sentiment; it means the rest of us will get our vaccines faster.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- J-dawg 6y ago
  Conversely, I am finding the reaction to anti-vaccine sentiment from some politicians to be pretty creepy. Already there is talk of compulsory vaccination or "vaccine passports". Labour (the UK opposition party) were even calling for spreading "misinformation" online to be illegal. I find this ridiculous considering the massive challenge we have ahead of us just to get the vaccine to the millions of people who desperately want it. Sure, if we get to the point where everyone who wants the vaccine has had it, and there are still people dying from COVID, then we can discuss illiberal measures to increase vaccine take-up. (I'd still be opposed to them). Getting worked up about this stuff when not a single person (outside of the trial groups) has been vaccinated yet just demonstrates our politicians' (on all sides) tendency towards authoritarianism.
  - spuz 6y ago
    I'm not sure I agree. The maths says that we need about 70% of the population to take the vaccine in order for it to no longer be a threat. We also have polling that says about 53% will refuse to take the vaccine. So we're already at the point where something else must be done such as adding incentives, a passport system or better advertising etc. OR continued lockdown measures and enforcement of mask wearing. It's not a theoretical problem we're already there. https://www.itv.com/news/2020-11-10/covid-vaccine-will-enough-of-the-population-get-immunised-to-get-rid-of-coronavirus https://www.itv.com/news/2020-11-10/covid-vaccine-will-enoug...
    - J-dawg 6y ago
      > The maths says that we need about 70% of the population to take the vaccine in order for it to no longer be a threat ...to no longer be a threat to an unvaccinated person. This isn't like the childhood vaccines, where we need herd immunity to protect the children who are too young to be vaccinated. Provided that everyone who wants the vaccine can get it, I don't see the problem with letting everyone else make their own decision. The current priority list of people is nowhere near 70% of the population anyway. Most people under 50 won't have the opportunity to be vaccinated for months. So this absolutely is a theoretical problem, at least for now. Given that Covid is such a mild disease for most young people, I predict that by the time the elderly and vulnerable have been vaccinated, this will be a non-issue anyway.
7952 6y ago
Someone has to be. Happy for it to be me.
- rovr138 6y ago
  Sincerely, thank you. The more people that get vaccinated, I think the easier it'll be to start vaccinating more and start getting back to normal fingers crossed
ulfw 6y ago
It's already been beta tested. That's the point of Phase 3 trials.
- cafebabbe 6y ago
  *Shortened phase 3 trials.
  - wiz21c 6y ago
    I'd be happy to know how that shortening affects confidence in the vaccine.
    - NhanH 6y ago
      Efficacy confidence isn't affected, but side effect confidence is.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      20% points seems to be the drop as the rapid approval process became a victim hyper-partisanship in the US. The push for a rapid approval has been viewed, by the left, as a political ploy by the right instead of a well-planned & scientifically supported approval process. Early polls about taking a vaccine showed much higher support for it before it was politicized. [0] Support dropped by 20%. Surprisingly, it dropped by about the same amount for both the political right & left, although support on the left started at a higher level. This may indicate that even people on the right were influenced by the perception of a too-rapid approval process. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/09/17/u-s-public-now-divided-over-whether-to-get-covid-19-vaccine/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/09/17/u-s-public-no...
  - ulfw 6y ago
    It's 40,000+ people. What else do you want?
- NDizzle 6y ago
  More like a pre-alpha...
dafoex 6y ago
Beta testing is done, apparently people have been throwing themselves at the human trials.

mhh__ 6y ago

We also have a fairly old, fat, and alcoholic population so if this doesn't work we're probably not getting out of this lightly (even relative to where we are now)

onion2k 6y ago
I am not old.
- ChrisRR 6y ago
  oldmanyellsatcloud.jpg

Toenex 6y ago

I suspect the bulk of the population will receive the 'Oxford' vaccine. It's still going through the approval process but the UK has ordered more of it. I believe the Pfizer vaccine is targeted to front line workers and the clinical vulnerable.

SubiculumCode 6y ago
Why? The 'Oxford' vaccine has been pretty shaky. Edit: source: https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-data-isnt-up-to-snuff/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-da...
- rjtavares 6y ago
  Source? Latest news[1] seem to indicate it's effective. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55040635 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55040635
  - SubiculumCode 6y ago
    Potentially. [1]https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-data-isnt-up-to-snuff/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-da...
    - rjtavares 6y ago
      Thanks!
    - lbeltrame 6y ago
      There's another readout expected in the USA sooner or later, with a far larger cohort (30K people), but for the full/full dose regimen.
    - sweezyjeezy 6y ago
      We don't need the super-high efficacy numbers (>90%) that the other vaccines are reporting for this to stop the virus. Typical flu vaccines are ~ 50%, I think the Oxford vaccine's results show that they've achieved this.

afandian 6y ago

To your point 3, Belgium may well have great logistics but the UK government has knowingly undermined and compromised UK logistics (the whole industry is crying out) as part of their Brexit process. Maybe there are extraordinary arrangements being made for the vaccine, but it won't be because of a good prevailing open-market logistics situation. Edit: here's the Road Haulage Association warning of severe supply chain disruption https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54021421 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54021421 Edit 2, since responses are unexpected: > HMRC's assumption is that there'll be 11 million new customs declarations a year on goods going from GB to NI as of January 1 https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1334073058815074304 https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1334073058815074304

djmobley 6y ago
Your comment has nothing to do with the logistics of rolling out a mass vaccination programme, but how exactly have the UK government’s Brexit negotiations “undermined and compromised UK logistics”? Negotiations are ongoing to secure a trade deal with the EU once the transition period is over. The UK are also securing trade deals with other countries, including Canada and Japan. Both sides recognise failure to reach a deal, or to extend the transition period, would be damaging for both sides. Which is precisely why both sides are negotiating a deal to ensure that doesn’t happen... Am I missing something here?
- afandian 6y ago
  The original comment said "3. Developed country with great logistics." Which I now realise I misread as "Developed in a country" (i.e. Belgium, where it's manufactured). An entirely different, erroneous, reading of the sentence. Therefore my comment addressed the nature of cross-channel shipping which authorities I respect have repeatedly warned about. It's too late to edit to add that clarification about the misreading. But that's what was missed. If the army steps in to provide logistics at a time of national crisis, that's great. But it's not what I would expect this government to do based on the recent historical evidence: We've been in a national crisis for a while and the government has routinely preferred to neglect public-sector expertise and go private in a vast array of public procurement. Much of it has been highly questionable judgment (ministers awarding contracts to friends with penalty clauses).

DanBC 6y ago

> Developed country with great logistics. Please don't under-estimate our ability to fuck this up, probably by giving the distribution contracts to a crony.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
apsec112 6y ago
I'm sure the UK is in the top twenty countries in the world for logistics infrastructure. It's easy to read news stories about your country messing things up, and quietly not read foreign-language media about poorer countries messing things up a lot more by comparison, and get a biased perspective.
- EliRivers 6y ago
  The infrastructure, absolutely. A serious road, rail and air network, lots of companies with lots of experience and all the right gear and so on. Where we fuck up is in the competency of the people in charge of awarding contracts. Be it Grayling giving millions of pounds to a ferry company with no ferries owned or leased, or indeed any experience at all with ferries (and, wonderfully, with a T&Cs on their website copy-pasted from a pizza delivery site). As a wonderful finale, the government was sued by EuroTunnel because they awarded the contract without going through the proper process (which, of course, would have meant that the drawbacks of a pizza delivery business offering ferries might have been identified); we gave millions to a Ferry company incapable of delivering anything, and then millions to an actual transport company in compensation for breaking the rules on tendering. Or be it KFC awarding their chicken distribution (despite warnings from people who knew) to a company with no experience in or facilities for cold food distribution, leading to KFC going literally out of business for a couple of weeks because they had no chicken in the stores. We Brits have a competent infrastructure and the ability for the people in charge to award contracts to entirely the wrong parts of it.
  - string 6y ago
    I know it's guaranteed internet points to deride the current government, and the ferry thing is/was despicable, but I think it's highly unlikely they're going to put KFC in charge of logistical operations for the vaccine rollout.

sussexby 6y ago

And we have a really good spreadsheet for tracking who's been infected /s

justsomeuser 6y ago
And also malware for taking distributed encrypted backups with excellent key hiding features.
CodeGlitch 6y ago
I know you are /s but just in case you didn't realise - the spreadsheet part was only on the export of the data from the tracking system (when it was sent to Gov).

FerretFred 6y ago

(3) errr.... Ok, apart from that, the ideal guinea-pigs would have been the House of Commons and The House of Lords. The former are ultimately replaceable by the electoral process, and the latter are equivalent to a Care Home, albeit taxpayer-funded and all the residents wear ermine-collared red gowns.

eplanit 6y ago

And probably all citizens will be required to be vaccinated.

adventured 6y ago
Boris Johnson just recently mentioned that that would not be the case, the vaccine will not be mandatory.
- academia_hack 6y ago
  One of the best predictors so far for UK COVID policy has been to assume anything Boris Johnson rules out will be the exact thing that happens.
Maxious 6y ago
> Boris Johnson says he strongly urges everyone to be vaccinated (jabs rolling out next week) but says it is 'no part or ambition of this country to make vaccines mandatory - that's not how we do things.' https://twitter.com/latikambourke/status/1334106542480777216 https://twitter.com/latikambourke/status/1334106542480777216
johnisgood 6y ago
You are being down-voted, but our politicians are saying exactly this. Well, either you vaccinate yourself, or you have to remain at home. How they are going to enforce it? No clue. Perhaps proof of being vaccinated before entering Government buildings, or the workplace.

swalsh 6y ago

In a recent article about the Moderna vaccine, it was mentioned that the actual development only took 2 days.... and it was done in January! Given how short of a time it took to actually develop this thing, could we have drastically sped up this process by maybe being a bit more risky with the trials? At this point ~1.5 million people have died from the virus. I've really struggled with this knowledge that we've had a vaccine which it turns out is 95% effective for practically the entire course of the pandemic at at this point... and our conservative "moral" process was to let 1.5 million people die while we vet it.

nicoburns 6y ago
To be fair, a lot more than 1.5 million people could have died if there were delayed adverse affects of the vaccine and we'd already done a mass rollout. I think it's probably good that we put it through a proper trial process. Also, we'd still have had to wait for production ramp up which I believe has been done in parallel to the testing, so it may not have saved that much tie.
simonh 6y ago
There are 321 vaccine candidates under development as of September with about 30 in clinical trials. Throughout the year there were probably many, many hundreds or thousands more discarded at early stages of development and evaluation. How would you have selected this particular candidate over all the other possibilities that got dropped?
- swalsh 6y ago
  I understand your point, I really wan't try to make some kind of moral criticism of the process. I realize it was developed for a reason. My question was more about the point that especially with this new mRNA process, we're going to be able to develop these things blazingly fast. But the process for approvals is still glacier slow (and this was already the SPED UP timeline). My question was more where is there room to speed this stuff up?
Exmoor 6y ago
Whether or not it would have been a good idea to loosen the approval process aside, accelerating it would likely not have had much of any effect on saving those lives. The bottleneck is production capacity. As I understand it Moderna and Pfizer/Biontech have both been building production capacity and creating vaccines as fast as possible, but have only now created enough to vaccinate a few tens of millions of people combined. If they had been approved in the summer, when they went to Phase III trials, they might have, perhaps, been able to turn out a few thousands vials a day which is not really enough to meaningfully impact the spread or death rates even if you were able to highly target high-risk groups.

sschueller 6y ago

4. Is an island that can be cut off incase of a zombie apocalypse...

kitd 6y ago
5. Equipped with pubs called "The Winchester"
- throwaway98797 6y ago
  6. All pubs named World’s End
  - napier 6y ago
    7. Other countries can carry out a longitudinal study on outcomes in the UK post vaccine authorization; checking in on the situation 28 days later and 28 weeks later.
    - jonplackett 6y ago
      I didn't realise I was on reddit...?
      - ducktective 6y ago
        Thank you kind stranger for the gold
      - tubularhells 6y ago
        This place is a drop in replacement for r/asd.
        aspyct 6y ago
        Yeah uhm... Never been to /r/asd, and now I'm slightly afraid of checking it out, seeing as two comments have been deleted :D

stuartbman 6y ago

Re: point 2 While the healthcare is centralised, the data is not, and often poorly federated between a multitude of organisations. Scotland has unified this much more and is far better placed to monitor for efficacy and side effects.

moneywoes 6y ago
Didn't an agency store data and loss data due to using an old format of excel file
- cian 6y ago
  Yes, they hit the legacy 65,000 row limit for .XLS files: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    As I read it, it was actually (and amazingly) a 65,000 column limit!
    - makomk 6y ago
      I'm pretty sure the "column limit" claim was a false online theory that just stuck around because we're in such a post-truth era that even the definition of post-truth is itself post-truth... The reputable news coverage all said it was the number of rows that was the problem.
      - BurningFrog 6y ago
        Now that you mention it, the story does have that "too inherently viral to be true" smell.

dan-robertson 6y ago

Indeed logistics will matter as the vaccine needs to be transported at around -80°C. So let’s hope nothing happens which might cause delays in shipping from Belgium to the U.K. after 31st December.

tubularhells 6y ago

>3. Developed country with great logistics. Wait post Brexit to see if you change your mind about that one.