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Fingers crossed for you reeksy (and Mark and everyone else)
Saw the ONS figures reported this morning - what is going on there? They always seem to be a dollar short and a day late, reporting a stable trend when we could all see rates rocketing before Xmas and now reporting a "shallow decline" when reported cases & Zoe data suggest a much bigger drop. In fact to the untrained eye it also looks like hospital admissions may now be declining too, so that'd put the peak of infections a couple of weeks ago.
Are the ONS actually delivering carefully worded reports that the media then mis-report, are their methods flawed (one for thecaptain and TiRed!), or are they actually right when everything else is wrong?
I was talking to the security team at a big local hospital (there for work),on tuesday. They said they've been really busy dealing with the covid nutters. The level of delusion and entitlement of some parts of our population is mind blowing.
at times like these, we need the B ark
Saw the ONS figures reported this morning – what is going on there?
which ONS page?
Could we just not let the asylum seekers out of the detention centres and replace them with these idiots harassing hospital staff and patients.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
I read on WalesOnline that a suspicious package was sent to a vaccine processing (pacakging I think) plant in north wales and the bomb disposal team had to come to diffuse it. It's not the most reliable news outlet but if true suggests militant anti-vaxxers???
Looking at the Welsh numbers we seem to be well onto the downward slope of hospital admissions (reducing for 6 weeks excluding a minor 1 week blip on for weke ending 10th jan (christmas?)); but still higher than the peak in the first wave. Deaths still seem constant or rising though.
uk wide deaths appear to be about turning the peak and following the reduction in infections
where are you looking for the welsh numbers?
edit: ignore me, its still early, missed 'walesonline'...!
Could we just not let the asylum seekers out of the detention centres and replace them with these idiots harassing hospital staff and patients.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
Apparently turning up at a hospital, abusing staff, claiming its all a hoax and then sharing it on social media is now a thing.
WTF is wrong with some people.
they're getting their 'news' from facebook, they're easily influenced, and scared, and now they're way down the rabbit hole and need deprogramming
there might not be anything fundamentally wrong with them, or might not have been before
@mrmonkfinger - WalesOnline was just that article re. the bomb. For numbers, I look at:
If you follow that link then thre are a bunch of tabs along the top and you can get deaths, hospital admissions etc and drill down into health boards and MSOAs
the react figures don't appear to match confirmed tests, wonder if it is the timeframe they are taken over that causes that
Zoe app says there are issues with the React data, whereas Zoe & ONS agree and tell a different story.
my other half is on the Novovax trial and was told at her appointment this week that interim results are due soon, if they show the vaccine to be effective the trial will be un-blinded and those on the placebo will be offered the vaccine, this should be in the next 4-6 weeks
This is a list of the vaccines in use or under development for use in the UK
https://www.gponline.com/covid-19-vaccines-lined-roll-out-nhs/article/1700217
The gsk Sanofi one isn't likely to be used anytime soon though as it showed limited immunogenicity. I think they are reformulating
My wife got her jag yesterday, the Pfizer one. She was very ill last night, very painful joints, nausea, weekness very flu-like and as a result is off work today. Seems to be an.uncommon reaction?
My wife got her jag yesterday, the Pfizer one. She was very ill last night, very painful joints, nausea, weekness very flu-like and as a result is off work today.
Same as Mrs Lunge with the AZ vaccine. Had a sore arm and felt ropey for 24 hours, was fine after that, though her HR was a tad high for another 24 hours after.
She was completely normal (well, as normal as Mrs Lunge ever is...!) 48 hours after.
Scotroutes - i was warned that this reaction is fairly common - flu like illness - when i got mine
Did i read that you are likely to have a worse reaction if yo have had covid?
Scotroutes – i was warned that this reaction is fairly common – flu like illness – when i got mine
Yeah, says 1 in 10 for many of the symptoms, 1 in 100 for some.
Did i read that you are likely to have a worse reaction if yo have had covid?
Intetesting. I'll look that up. Ta.
She's mostly annoyed that she could have chosen to have the jag at the start of her days-off cycle rather than the day before she starts her days-on.
Did i read that you are likely to have a worse reaction if yo have had covid?
Purely anecdotal as I said before, but this is certainly the case amongst the testing team my wife has been working with, 36 hours of minor flu like symptoms, not enough to put anyone off, certainly.
My wife got her jag yesterday, the Pfizer one. She was very ill last night, very painful joints, nausea, weekness very flu-like and as a result is off work today. Seems to be an.uncommon reaction?
one of the parents in our school circle had the jab (vulnerable elder child) and was in bed for a day with 'something like the flu'
uncommon but not that much so, I guess
scotroutes
Full Member
My wife got her jag yesterday, the Pfizer one. She was very ill last night, very painful joints, nausea, weekness very flu-like and as a result is off work today. Seems to be an.uncommon reaction?
I had similar about 24hrs after the vaccine: I went to bed, slept like a log and felt fine in the morning. Hopefully the symptoms will wear off equally quickly for your wife.
She’s mostly annoyed that she could have chosen to have the jag at the start of her days-off cycle rather than the day before she starts her days-on.
Surely you want to be ill on your days on not days off 😉
good on her for thinking like that in reality
I guess it has to be a reassurance that the vaccine is actually doing something though.
The reaction is your immune system going mental and attacking an invading item.
MrsMC was jabbed yesterday with the AZ vaccine - retired to bed early last night with flu like shivers and headache. Fine today apart from a very sore arm.
Are the ONS actually delivering carefully worded reports that the media then mis-report, are their methods flawed (one for thecaptain and TiRed!), or are they actually right when everything else is wrong?
ONS wont have an agenda, there role is to collect the data, and interpret it as accurately as they can.
Their methods are better than the daily testing numbers, but as you said, theres the delay in getting the data back, analysing it and then reporting it.
Not what you need in a fast moving pandemic.
This is one of the reasons lockdowns havent come soon enough, as they are looking at data which a couple of weeks old.
The daily cases number isnt perfect (far from it), but it does give data in a timely manor.
Look at at % of positive cases.
Back on the 4th Jan it was 14.9%, but its been falling fast down to 5.0% on the 25th Jan.
If that rate of decline continues there will be minimal cases by the time we get to the 8th March
scotroutes
Full Member
My wife got her jag yesterday, the Pfizer one. She was very ill last night, very painful joints, nausea, weekness very flu-like and as a result is off work today. Seems to be an.uncommon reaction?
My sister-in-law and my cousin have both had reactions to the Pfizer jab.
Not surprised regarding the Sister-in-law (42) - she has some issues and is often ill - however my cousin (33) is fit/healthy.
I'm happy to have the jab ASAP - a couple of days feeling ill looks better than COVID.
Thoughts on Boris doing a trip across the UK to do a hospital tour mid lockdown?
Feels a very poor choice to me - his role should surely be to demonstrate where the line is on essential travel and human to human contact regardless of any risk or otherwise. To me this social distanced moral booster political opinion booster falls well below that.
Underlines he's incapable of learning, doing the right thing or reading the room country
I just assumed his new mistress lives up that way.
@StuE thanks for sharing that, I too am on the Novavax trial, I had my second jab in early December. I’m looking forward to finding out the results!
UK deaths are peaking and will start to decline. Some regions have been a little stubborn to respond to lockdowns, North East and Yorkshire looks flat. ZOE, ONS and REACT are now all trending in the same direction. Clearly lockdowns have the desired effect, albeit slower if a strain is more transmissible - there is less effect for the same restriction. It's why influenza has been so low (easier to control than SARS-CoV2).
The prime minister now seems to think that following the science is a good thing. As I previously mentioned, schools will remain closed till Easter. Some vaccine nationalism seems to be entertaining the media - but as noted here, making stuff in the most regulated environment is HARD.
for some GOOD news. David Ho's group published a nice paper yesterday on resistance of new strains to antibodies, past patient sera and vaccine sera. UK variant is pretty covered by all of them (only about a 3=fold shift in potency loss). The SA variant looks a little more feisty. I still think this will lead to only symptoms or asymptomatic infections rather than hospitalisations.
And on the work front... we dosed our first patient in combination with the Lilly antibody yesterday (good for resistance as SA strain is missed by banlanivimab). Made a bit of media noise. Phase 3 in high risk patients is still ongoing, fingers crossed it looks like Lilly and Regeneron.
And @reeksy that is awful, I'm really sorry for your family. So often everything runs OK and then one thinks (like a fall) sets off a sorry chain of events.
Sorry to hit politics on this again but UK.Gov trying to blow the Good Law Project out of the water on commercial risk in pursuing visibility into the award of multi-million COVID contracts - 'not in the public interest'....
https://goodlawproject.org/update/ramping-up-costs-silence-us/
Firmly back on topic Mrs Scuttler had OAZ vaccine yesterday and flu-like wiped out for 24 hours. She's much better this afternoon.
North East and Yorkshire looks flat
This morning's briefing had an air of cautious optimism that we may be over the peak. We are still expected to receive patients from other areas without capacity.
UK.Gov trying to blow the Good Law Project out of the water
Is it me, or is that tantamount to admitting guilt?
Tory MP Desmond Swayne is now refusing to apologise for this comments and misinformation about the vaccine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55839252
Breaking news on @FT Coronavirus latest: Germany blocks use of AstraZeneca jab for over-65s
Hmmm, we didn't need that. A fussy 65+ population with concerns about which one they are going to get based on this being in the news is going to really slow things down.
EMA hasn't even approved it for Europe yet. This particular bit of posturing must be designed to put pressure on AZ. If EMA approves it for over-65s (after considering data on safety and efficacy), they are just going to look daft. If EMA doesn't approve it for over-65s, then I guess that solves their AZ vaccine shortfall for the time being.
The Oxford data on over 65's is very modest and hard to deconstruct from the Lancet paper. I am not surprised. If you subscribe to evidence-based medicine, notably in drug approvals, then it is a sound decision that needs more data. Talking of "more data". The Sanofi/GSK Phase1 trial has been published, and let's just say that Oxford/AZ are not the only ones with dose issues. There looks like a vaccine here, but the dose was 3-4x too low based on release assay issues 🙁 .
Hmmm, we didn’t need that.
“We” might not need it, but all countries are planning on using multiple vaccines… targeting the use of each of them based on the results of the tests seems wise. Fewer hunches, more data driven optimum use of the vaccines isn’t unreasonable.
If you subscribe to evidence-based medicine
What else is there?
I don't mean that in bad faith.
What else is there?
Lower thresholds for strength of evidence based on need and benefit risk. A trend in the right direction in a small under-powered study with significant need might lower the hurdle for an approval. Oncology is a classic example. Uncontrolled small trials for initial approval, followed by large survival trials.
I doesn't always pan out the way you think it will
Now in truth, although those vaccine trials look large (10's of thousands), for population-based interventions, they are the equivalent of those early oncology trials. The proof is in the large roll-out post initial approval. The mRNA vaccines look like they have robust results and will make the eventual cut. I am less optimistic about the Ox/AZ vaccine. Come back in a year or two to this prediction and see how it ages.
Also as a gp most of what I do isn’t very evidence based. Because trials don’t get done on 78 year olds with copd t2dm dementia colon cancer living in a care home or with carers 4 times a day but poor nutrition loneliness and countless other social factors which will effect outcomes.
Lack of evidence of benefit is not evidence of lack of benefit.
Eg loads of evidence from trials about when to treat hypertension in 50 year olds. Not so much on when you could stop treatment because risks of side effects now outweighs benefit.
It’s usually referred to as clinical judgment
The Oxford data on over 65’s is very modest
Is the data any more robust for other vaccines?
Is the data any more robust for other vaccines?
Yes - Pfizer has impressive data explicitly in the elderly; 21.4% of subjects were > 65 and 4.3% above 75 years, with a median 51 years. They reported 3/7500 vs. 48/7543 cases in >55 year olds with efficacy of 93.7% compared with 95.6% in 16-55. Moderna had 25.3% above 65 with 100% efficacy - 0/3527 vs. 15/3499 infections. These vaccines were not developed by academics.
I am less optimistic about the Ox/AZ vaccine.
Yikes, isn’t the AZ vaccine the backbone of the UK’s programme? What implications are you inferring to?
I think it was one of the episodes of the how to vaccinate the world podcast where someone said that after 3 million doses of a vaccine have been given we can probably tell if it’s really safe, so we’ve passed that test for the Pfizer jab now. As for efficacy... not for a while.
Re Pfizer vs Astra Zeneca-
My practice had 990 az vaccine delivered yesterday and we will have given over 800 by Saturday tea time. That’s more doses than have been given of Pfizer to my patients at the PCN sites since they started in early December. The logistical issues with the Pfizer vaccine do limit its usefulness for “vaccinating the world” and we are going to have to accept that a licenced vaccine is a licenced vaccine and is effective. If the patients who are booked in on Saturday (all >70) start worrying that Oxford vaccine isn’t quite as good as Pfizer we will be in trouble. Luckily they aren’t on Twitter, but if it makes it to the pages of the express we may have a problem.
Yikes, isn’t the AZ vaccine the backbone of the UK’s programme? What implications are you inferring to?
I think the OX/AZ vaccine will provide benefits for the individual - reduced likelihood of death and lower severity of infection with reduced healthcare burden. That's effective enough for now. Longer-term, reduced spread and tighter control across the globe with possible repeated vaccinations every few years? Less convincing. There, I think more mainstream technologies will eventually come good.
In the published studies, the mRNA vaccines are demonstrably statistically significantly superior to the OX/AZ choice. And that is in an older population to boot. But for the near-term goal, "good enough" is where we are. That wasn't assured six months ago.
Boris "Did everything we can" - yes indeed:
Correspondence with Government has revealed they expect to spend a staggering £1 million defending our judicial review of their decisions to award contracts criticised by the NAO. This is a sum unprecedented in our lawyers’ experience of judicial review proceedings. We can’t but wonder whether they are trying to scare us off – using the bottomless public purse to avoid accountability to the public.
Government also says, remarkably, that finding out whether they acted lawfully in channelling hundreds of millions or billions to their VIP associates, is not in the public interest.
We had until recently been working on the understanding that we had raised enough money for our challenges to Government’s awards of hundreds of millions of pounds of PPE contracts to Pestfix, Ayanda, and Clandeboye.
We were shocked to learn that – having failed to provide the evidence we’ve been asking for since July – Government is threatening a vast disclosure exercise going well beyond what would normally be undertaken in a judicial review. And not just that they have hired an expensive international commercial law firm. They expect to have a team of 30-40 working for up to 3 months on an exercise that has not been requested by us, or by the Court.
In the experience of our legal team, costs incurred by Government in judicial review proceedings rarely exceed £100,000. Here Government says it has already spent over £325,000, and estimates their total costs will amount to £1 million – a staggering sum for a judicial review.
Government knows full well that we cannot take existential risk on bringing a single case. So we wrote to Government asking it to agree and order ‘capping’ both our costs and the taxpayers’ costs in these public interest proceedings.
We were shocked this week to receive their response contending that the litigation is not in the public interest, and refusing our proposed reciprocal cap: “In particular our client does not agree that the proceedings are ‘public interest proceedings'”. These are cases involving on Government’s own admission hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on unusable facemasks on companies that went through the VIP lane.
Not in the public interest? What are they on!
The point is all the more remarkable given that a barrister employed by the Government Legal Department in her witness statement of 30 November stated that: “We acknowledge that there is considerable public interest in Covid related procurement, particularly of PPE.”
We have now applied to the court for a Cost Cap. In line with our transparency principles I am publishing my Witness Statement. But if we don’t get one, unless a white knight or white knights emerge, the simple fact is we will have to abandon the litigation. We are not in a position to bear a £1 millio n risk.
Thank you,
Jolyon Maugham QC
Director of Good Law Project
Thanks Tired.
Boris “Did everything we can” – yes indeed:
I'm not sure I understand that cut and pasted section? The gov is going to, effectively, dump so much paper on the law firm in question that they won't be able to process it due to costs?
Thanks Tired.
Hope it's clear. For full disclosure, I work for the competitor (GSK), not on our vaccine as it happens. But I'd take the OX/AZ vaccine like a shot (sorry) when offered it (am 53). I've had COVID - the long kind (ill again today as it happens). If somebody had said take this or lose 30% of your VO2 max, I'd have my arm out ASAP.
As rob says - it comes down to clinical judgement.
Oxford data published by German agency here https://twitter.com/olivernmoody/status/1354781400071860230/photo/1 (maybe)
Efficacy is 1/341 vs. 1/319, 5% but inestimable for sample size
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/large-scale-coronavirus-vaccine-manufacturing-begins-in-scotland
Well that’s news to me, I’ve not heard this vaccine mentioned before.
I’m not sure I understand that cut and pasted section? The gov is going to, effectively, dump so much paper on the law firm in question that they won’t be able to process it due to costs?
I read it as "if this goes to court and we lose and we are ordered to pay costs we won't be able to"
I think anyway, I'm no lawyer
Just been contacted to have our shots, Mrs MD and me, both >70, on Sunday.
It will be at Lakeside where they have the darts championships....hope they don't use that method for the injections 🙂
Just come off the Prof. Brian Cox Royal Society lecture/chat about the vaccines. Worth a look, I’d imagine it’d be up on YouTube to rewatch very soon
It will be at Lakeside where they have the darts championships….hope they don’t use that method for the injections
It would be good for the social distancing.
So, junior spent the whole of Sunday in a confined music misxing studio with a guy who's just phoned him to say he's tested positive. On Monday junior arrived at our place telling us he'd been super careful before coming to visit and there was no point us all wearing masks at home or in the car.
This morning junior showed cold symptoms and complained about back ache before we went out skk touring for the day in the car. Coldy to the point I asked him to check if any of his recent contacts were ill.
I suppose this is where I find out if I had it last March and if there are any antibodies left.
On the bright side I really have been playing by the rules and junior is the only person apart from Madame I've had unmasked contact with since errr, September. So if I've got it there's no one to inform.
That's all it takes folks, just one person you don't feel you can tell to **** off if they don't wear a mask and you're ****ed.
Bugger. Hope it all comes out ok for you.
Thanks, Del. No sympathy sought though, more a tale of caution. At Christmas when we knew he was taking risks he was asked to spend Christmas on his own rather than with us - he did so with good grace. Hindsight being wonderful I should have been as intransigent this time around too.
It will be at Lakeside where they have the darts championships
In one. . .!
Let's see what you could have won!
I read that the Pfizer vaccine has a similar issue to the AZ vaccine in that the Pfizer one is underpowered to show efficacy in the >75 age group. Is that your take on it tired?
Pfizer have 4% over 75. The result for over 65 is significant. They have 10x the number of elderly as OX/AZ. Numbers in the post above.
More good news, Novavax showing good numbers. 🙏🏻
When will Novovax likely get approval?
More good news, Novavax showing good numbers. 🙏🏻
Not so much in South Africa though... Not safe until we are all safe and all that.
So should we be caving in to eu pressure and handing over our vaccine supplies? I’m kinda thinking no, we have the highest death rate in Europe, we funded the research, our government (and it’s rare I give them any credit) got their arse in gear and ordered it 3 months in advance whilst it’s not even been signed off for use by the eu. Yet because their factories can’t produce it they want our stocks....
Shame this wasn’t a problem that was being faced by the EU back in December, I can imagine it would have been used by boris as a great bargaining chip. I imagine we have all the fishing rights we wanted by now, all in exchange for a slightly larger pensioner death toll.
Either way, strike one for the brexiteers I’m afraid, I can just imagine the daily mail headline tomorrow!😳
I do kind of think if a vaccine has supply issues it should be an equal cut to all. Unless the AZ contracts specifically state who gets it first, we aren’t going to win a pissing contest on medicine with the rest of the world.
Here's a science-backed view of the lockdown:
https://gbdeclaration.org/frequently-asked-questions/
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration – As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.
Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.
Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.
As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.
The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.
Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.
Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.
https://gbdeclaration.org/#read
I do kind of think if a vaccine has supply issues it should be an equal cut to all. Unless the AZ contracts specifically state who gets it first, we aren’t going to win a pissing contest on medicine with the rest of the world.
But why give it to the EU before say, South Africa or other developing countries? Their stance is not based on altruism but on domestic self-interest.
This mess is partly the EU’s own making. I notice that they were also suggesting a ban on exports of ‘their’ vaccines in response to the problem. This is pretty much every man for himself whilst supplies are short, and as much as I am loath to say it, this is one of the few benefits of Brexit..
Er. You have read the many and comprehensive debunkings of the Great Barrington Declaration? A document co-authored by a woman who declared the pandemic was virtually over last May?
But why give it to the EU before say, South Africa or other developing countries? Their stance is not based on altruism but on domestic self-interest.
This mess is partly the EU’s own making. I notice that they were also suggesting a ban on exports of ‘their’ vaccines in response to the problem. This is pretty much every man for himself whilst supplies are short, and as much as I am loath to say it, this is one of the few benefits of Brexit..
Agreed..although You put it better than i did...
Are they going to have the balls to go after the ones going to Israel?
Pretty pleased I did the Novavax trial now as its been a hassle at times! But it’s been worth it!!!
I wonder if they will unblind me?!
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/health/novavax-covid-19-vaccine.html is worth a read. Now compare that 89.3% including the half with the UK variant of concern with the OX/AZ 62.1% for SD/SD. The Novovax is the first of the more traditional vaccines that use protein subunits. and the efficacy looks a lot like mRNA. I hope they can make a lot of it. It's good news for more traditional technologies.
@FFJA they should offer you active after the trial if you received placebo, no?
The organisation i work for just released this video.
A bit weird. Not sure how i feel about it. Political showboating, or a genuine attempt to get people to hold on until vaccination starts (aiming for end Feb, early March)? There's a risk of being complacent.