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Has the track and trace system been completely forgotten about now?
Now I've gone from trusting the MHRA to wondering whether senior leadership have taken up doing smack as a hobby.
I'm inclined to think that there is a certain amount of pant-shitting going on if that's the evidence they are relying on.
I no longer believe that this is a parody account
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson_MP/status/1346512070724956161
Ah thanks oakleymuppet. So are there any data on the single dose only regime? I know that we in the Oxford trial we were originally going to have just one dose then a second was offered after 12 weeks, which most people I know accepted but some wouldn’t have. Several different arms with different amounts of blood testing/symptom diaries etc.
With the message being about the jab and getting protection plus Ryan Air's rather helpful jab and go you have to wonder if AWOL for second shot is being banked as a major issue. Then there's wk 12 - if we cant go to 3-4million a week we're going backwards.
International travel is going to be an interesting one. If there is a move to vaccination passports UK is going to be potentially out of step. I can see Boris trying to cave and saying you can travel on one shot due to pressure from the travel industry. I assume there is going to have to be a lot of restriction on travel to destinations to prevent importing a new potentially resistant strain.
Roads today are just as busy as normal.
BJ seems intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
Ah thanks oakleymuppet. So are there any data on the single dose only regime?
Moderna have reported data for subjects who only received one dose. It looks acceptable. But the Pfizer data is really hinging on four subjects. Oxford were less prescriptive about time to redosing and I am less concerned there.
What about the poor bloke working? Surely this massively increases the risk for BOTH parties vs. just getting what you (genuinely) need and getting out?
A lot of that is down to the DIY companies (or garden centres).
I can only speak from Lockdown 1 ... but a great deal of things couldn't be ordered for click and collect.
Reasons why? Loads.. glue with solvent (or without but classed in the same class).. knives... heavy ... to small.... in normal times perhaps the idea is to get people in browsing? (I for one am terrible in a tool shop)...
I spent ages getting some flagstones delivered .. I can't remember why but something else on the delivery seemed to cause a problem saying out of stock .... but not WHAT ... and when I removed items incrementally I worked out what it was [I don't think it was absolutely needed]
It would have been quicker to just drive to Wickes TBH....
I'm sure some of the people are just trying to get stuff done at home....
I wish I had done more reading on the pfizer trial results.
not doing routine pcr (i.e. All enrolled patients) screening when you know a disease has a high level of asymptomatic infections feels careless at best and cherry picking at worst.
FDA agreed endpoint was PCR-confirmed symptomatic infections. Hence the trial design (and Moderna copy). It's a robust interpretation of what the vaccine can do and hence the limited claim and nothing about transmission. It reduces symptomatic infections by 95%. It might convert them all to asymptomatic infections that can still spread. It probably doesn't.
Yeah that's fair enough, it does feel like a missed opportunity on some extremely good data. Well would be interesting but maybe not reassuring.
TiRed what say you about the suspected but unconfirmed covid cases the bmj article raises? We know the pcr test has a variable false negative rate so should these not be at least factored in?
Exclusion of 371 Pfizer participants, mostly in the vaccine rather than placebo group (311 vs. 60), for "other important protocol deviations on or prior to 7days after Dose 2" ought surely to have prompted some questions and explanation of the nature of these unspecified deviations which appear not to be random as between the two arms?
Out of curiousity, what are the implications for a failed vaccine deployment? ie suppose that the shifting of dates or a reliance on a single dose where two doses was the requirement, creates a situation where people have received the vaccine but it's ineffective or drastically less effective than it should have been? Can you then revaccinate without any issues? (specific to these vaccines I'm sure the answer is "that's not been tested", so more generally)
Or put it a different way, what's the worst case scenario with pissing about with vaccines?
Or put it a different way, what’s the worst case scenario with pissing about with vaccines?
(a) you waste all of the initial doses, having to start again and thus putting the whole programme back 9 months.
(b) the vaccine is ineffective and folk die as a result - possibly exacerbated by (a)
(c) you kill all of those who you've had to revaccinate.
Well would be interesting but maybe not reassuring.
Academic interest - Pharma isn't going to mess around 😉
“other important protocol deviations on or prior to 7days after Dose 2”
Could be anything - doses too long for example, wrong age, pregnant, contra-indicated... So much could be a deviation. there is an Intent to Treat analysis, which is anyone who received at least one dose of investigational medicine. Not seen that reported though for the vaccine. It's a different review division to drugs. Their rules.
Or put it a different way, what’s the worst case scenario with pissing about with vaccines?
The FDA will always err on the side of caution and expand on the basis of data and (sometimes) an inspired analysis. The worst case, is that people receive an effective vaccine of (relatively) unknown duration of protection. Efficacy will not fall off a cliff.
You don't win a marathon sprinting to the first mile marker. Vaccine rollout will be a marathon. And will be annual with influenza, with multiple options and possibly annual tuning, also like influenza. This is compressing 20 years of flu history into 1 year.
International travel is going to be an interesting one. If there is a move to vaccination passports UK is going to be potentially out of step.
I’ve not been too critical of the government under the unprecedented global situation so far (at least not compared to the consensus on this forum). And I’m happy to accept countrywide restrictions for the good of the populace even if they are detrimental to myself.
But if the rich retired demographic (Tory voting shoe ins) get to go on their cruises this summer and I don’t get to go mountain biking, then f*** it, I’m rioting.
It’ll be just the retired folk at gigs…
[ not really, but interesting proposal from Ticketmaster ]
Interesting concept - and note that it does allow for negative test in the preceding days.
I guess the vaccinated will be able to snap up some discounted last minute tickets off those who failed their test. COVID safe ticket touts?
I keep thinking about what the PM was saying at the weekend as regards schools, and comparing it to where we are now… and wondering if he even read what Sage had told him before Xmas ‘till Monday…
https://twitter.com/globalhlthtwit/status/1346586015595700224?s=21
Watch as Christmas washes out and cases peak in the next week and admissions a week later. Especially look at the South East, East and London. If cases are not down in these regions in a week, things will be grave. I thought the SAGE advice was pretty clear. Not much has changed. Other than we have a more accurate measure of increased transmissibility and the frequency of the variant has risen.
All the info I’ve seen suggests we are turning a corner in Kent/Sussex.
@dantsw13 there was a lot of focus on Kent before Christmas , and that was where the new strain was first noticed. I wonder if Kent are a couple of weeks ahead of the rest of the country?
Would be interesting to see stats for cases, hospital transmission and deaths and compare to rest of the country.
It’ll be just the retired folk at gigs…
Strangely my m8 was mentioning that they were planning on doing Glastonbury this year and mentioned that the ‘young uns’ will probably not be that happy 🙁
That Larry Brilliant episode of “how to vaccinate the world” is essential listening… it sort of sums the whole series up, while also challenging its remit/proposition to some degree. A must listen.
Did anyone see BBC Breakfast this morning?
Professor Dr. Anthony Harnden was on, talking about vaccinating his patients.
He is has long covid (caught it in March), was very fit and a keen mtbiker.
At the moment he is still recovering but is nowhere as fatigued or as ill as he was.
All the info I’ve seen suggests we are turning a corner in Kent/Sussex.
Is there a handy page that shows historic graphs for cases/admissions/deaths by UK region (and not just eng/ire/sc/wa)?
ou don’t win a marathon sprinting to the first mile marker.
No, you first set up a company to sell running shoes.
Good BBC World Service HARDtalk with Neil Ferguson at 02:06 this morning
Good BBC World Service HARDtalk with Neil Ferguson at 02:06 this morning
I'll have to take your word for that, but Newsnight were doing the BBC "balance" thing with Toby Young last night.
Toby Young and his ilk don't deserve any air time. The BBC should be flagging anything they say as misinformation. The media in general (and The Lancet) was part of the problem with MMR - this is the same.
And brexit, and climate change...hard to avoid concluding that the BBC (news) is part of the problem.
And brexit, and climate change…hard to avoid concluding that the BBC (news) is part of the problem.
Their 'balance' thing is long past it's sell by date. It is not balance to give excess airtime to a minority of evidence free and/or factually incorrect views. It is simply giving airtime to incorrect views.
Quite pleased at the appearance of their 'fact check' articles though.
I thought Toby Young looked as poor on NewsNight last night as Sunetra Gupta did on the Today program. Where is Mike Yeadon and has he called the end of the epidemic in Kent yet? The skeptical view, most notably the "No second wave, over by October, burnt out due to high immunity levels, flu-like excess mortality" position has been thoroughly debunked by the null hypothesis that I have stated all along (I'd have rather been wrong, to be honest).
Sadly the consensus view about this new pathogen appears largely correct. Relatively easily spread respiratory infection, controlled by contact restrictions, morbidity four-times greater than annual influenza, little risk of death but unknown morbidity in the young, little evidence of the impact of immunity on spread.
I still follow and occasionally comment on lockdownskeptics, but there is now a lot of heat and very little light - swedenborg's data-based posts are worth reading.
"Not even half-way there"
Does the model used assume a perma-lockdown?
What sort of (dare I use it) R rate is that suggesting for the near term future with the new variant?
The calculation I presented was without any lockdown (I did it before this was announced!), but on the other hand, I was probably underestimating the virulence of the new variant.
When I assume a harsh lockdown for 6 weeks it helps significantly but is still pretty grim. There is just too much of it around and even a fairly optimistic R=0.85 only makes infection rate drift down gently.
R=0.5 would make a genuine difference but I doubt it's achievable.
The immunologists seem pretty happy with the vaccine strategy, given the circumstances
ta
one further Q:
without any lockdown
ah, but, free-for-all, or with the tiers system in place?
thought Toby Young looked as poor on NewsNight last night as Sunetra Gupta did on the Today program
You are not the target audience sadly!!
@mrmonkfinger, I was just keeping the same R number that has fitted recent growth, ie about 1.3 or thereabouts. I don't choose an R value and impose it, I just fit the model and see what it comes up with, so implicitly that equates to the growth rate over the past few weeks, when the tiers (in one form or another) were in force. Certainly, we can collectively act to change the R value (in either direction!)
My son's primary school phoned to ask where our son was as my wife is a police officer. She said its very confusing as there are lots of children in school. For the record we haven't sent him in during any lockdown.
I've had a roofer come round this morning and he commented that their primary school was very busy when his wife dropped their kid off. She is in demolition which is apparently on the list.
And another friends kids are in school as he runs an electrical contractors that amongst other things works on schools. She is working from home.
I remember talking to a teacher from my boys school during lockdown 1 and she said that after the first few weeks the numbers had dropped right off.
This isn't meant in a judgemental way, I'm lucky that I have one lovely 10 year old boy to homeschool, just wondering how effective this will be if too many kids still attend school.
This is bleak
https://unherd.com/2021/01/inside-the-covid-ward/
/blockquote>Should be more widely circulated 🙁
just wondering how effective this will be if too many kids still attend school.
In lockdown one I would have a handful of kids to supervise from the entire secondary school. Yesterday I had 20 year 7's and another 20 were in another room. We are better at getting more of the vulnerable in to work in school though which is good, at best most would do no work at home.
Back in tomorrow but with year 10's I think.