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Modesty forbids, but my proudest scientific achievement has been the invention, development and eventual approval of one of those drugs.
Did you also have a hand in the naming of ofatumumab? Were you all pissed at the time?
It’s worse than that. People can’t afford to be off work. They are not isolating. They are avoiding track and trace, and avoiding getting tested, to avoid isolating. So the figures only show some of the problem. The solution is government support aimed at individuals, and worker protection legislation aimed at employers… as other countries put in place 10 months ago.
agree
Im was sitting at home feeling sorry for my self but work have been great & I get sick pay
however just learnt 2 bin men have died & Serco only let them take 2 periods of paid isolation
wtf??
I suspect Wave 4 will be an import of an even more transmissible / vaccine resistant variant.
Can't help but feel that by the time we get to May and the vaccine has been rolled out to all the 9 priority groups, a resistant mutation will have emerged. They are already saying that it's likely the vaccine will be less effective against the Brazilian and South African varients which ain't so good
At some point in near future I reckon we are just going to have to close the border like new Zealand etc. It's clearly not going to work to ban flights from certain countries, folks will always find a way round that. We need mandatory quarentine sites as well, as folks clearly can't be trusted isolating for the full 10 day period at home, and even if they do, that's afyer they've got themselves home via public transport, thus completely defeating the purpose
We need mandatory quarentine sites as well, as folks clearly can’t be trusted isolating for the full 10 day period at home, and even if they do, that’s afyer they’ve got themselves home via public transport, thus completely defeating the purpose
If only there were unused hotels next to ports and airports that could be used for quarantine, and manned by the army. Seems to be (mostly) pretty effective in Australia and elsewhere
At some point in near future I reckon we are just going to have to close the border like new Zealand etc.
It’s also possible, given that we seem to be happy to live with loads of people being infected at once in the UK, and started vaccinating early… that a vaccine resistant strain is identified first here… and everyone else shuts their borders to us.
That MK story is so sad. Serco suck, but they will not be the only employers acting this way.
that a vaccine resistant strain is identified first here… and everyone else shuts their borders to us.
Indeed..in which case they should absolutely do that. But at the moment the most worrying variants identified are from abroad, and I can guarantee the flight bans from those countries will not stop more cases in next few weeks
We need mandatory quarentine sites as well, as folks clearly can’t be trusted isolating for the full 10 day period at home, and even if they do, that’s afyer they’ve got themselves home via public transport, thus completely defeating the purpose
wait... what... a "mandatory quarentine site" for someone who has done nothing wrong. Sounds like jail to me. I know its not right to say people are mental... but if it looks like a duck.
wait… what… a “mandatory quarentine site” for someone who has done nothing wrong. Sounds like jail to me.
Being in quarantine isn't a punishment for doing something wrong.
Not sure how but they are vaccinating 70 somethings locally already
Lots of book face people saying ' got my first injection today `
I thought round 1 was over 85yo plus nhs
maybe that has been acheived within the catchment and the vaccine is still arriving so they are cracking on
wait… what… a “mandatory quarentine site” for someone who has done nothing wrong. Sounds like jail to me. I know its not right to say people are mental… but if it looks like a duck.
Doesn't seem to be a problem in Australia and New Zealand and plenty of other places. Though I believe there's a precedent for people arriving in Australia and being locked up
Not sure how but they are vaccinating 70 somethings locally alread
Father in law got his first jab today in Liverpool, he’s 76 I think. He’s BAME so I don’t know if that prioritised him
ofatumumab
No it came with the deal - we just had fun trying to name the covid antibody though.
There is a bit of a code:
Ofa- is a stem - anything you like really
-tum- means tumour (it was for cancer originally)
-u- means it’s human (not chimeric -xi-)
-mab means it’s a monoclonal antibody
so ri-tu-xi-mab is a chimeric (a half mouse actually) antibody also for cancer.
Ocrelizumab is
Ocre- stem
-li- for inflammation (not cancer now)
-zu- means humaniZed (swapped from chimera by mutating some amino acids)
-mab means it’s still an antibody.
Sadly this usan code is falling out of favour now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_of_monoclonal_antibodies
Back to COVID... The new Lilly mab is banlanivimab. Your homework is to decode it. Hint it came out of a human so is not chimeric or humaniZed.
Doesn’t seem to be a problem in Australia and New Zealand and plenty of other places.
But… “freedom”… or something. The histrionics that some people come out with when someone suggests having a few restrictions in a medical emergency… it’s very odd. Two weeks in a hotel to stop the virus… how hard can that be? Or don’t travel abroad for a while.
BBC reporting ~1250 deaths today
But… “freedom”… or something. The histrionics that some people come out with when someone suggests having a few restrictions in a medical emergency… it’s very odd. Two weeks in a hotel to stop the virus… how hard can that be? Or don’t travel abroad for a while.
I agree, as someone pointed out on here much of the lockdown is literally about telling people to do nothing.... and some can't handle even that.lol
My dad is 75 and down to get his vaccine on Sunday. He has lots of issues but wasn't told to shield first time round and I read through the list of reasons to bump him up and none seemed specific to him. He's in Bradford.
Is it significant that virtually 10% of hospitalised people are on ventilation? I thought it had crept up over the last week but it’s now quite clear even without a calculator.
It’s a response to staying longer in hospital. Survival is higher than it was so duration of stay and hence likelihood of mechanical ventilation increases.
Two weeks in a hotel to stop the virus… how hard can that be? Or don’t travel abroad for a while.
Not only is there public support in Australia for 14 day mandatory quarantine on arrival, public opinion is that it needs to be much stricter.
Both the outbreak in Melbourne (which resulted in one of the worlds strictest lockdown for 3+ months), and the smaller "clusters" in Sydney and Brisbane, were the result of leaks in lockdown. Namely: Security guards (now run by the army), hotel cleaners, people driving the quarantine buses, and Aircrew (who have to self-isolate rather than quarantine I think.
In my mind - the small numbers of leaks that there have been, and the resulting infection clusters and subsequent restrictions, demonstrate just how effective Australia's quarantine continues to be.
We have had one case of the UK variant "in the wild" - a quarantine hotel cleaner in Brisbane, who then gave it to her husband. This prompted an immediate lockdown of Brisbane, and interstate travel ban, to give time for the contact tracing teams to do their job. The Queensland premier has announced today that they don't expect any more spread beyond those two people for the UK strain.
This prompted an immediate lockdown of Brisbane, and interstate travel ban, to give time for the contact tracing teams to do their job.
You see, that's where my plan for quarantine in the UK comes unstuck...🤦♂️
Article in today’s Telegraph:
After almost a year of watching the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of Covid-19, the speed of progress now is hard to take in. Just a few months ago, Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, was telling colleagues he didn’t believe a vaccine would come in time. Now we have several of them, highly effective, already delivered to millions worldwide. The logistics, the safety: it’s all going as well as can be expected – in Britain, especially. The big question is what happens next.
Israel will be the first to give the world an answer. Benjamin Netanyahu, up for re-election in March, is now campaigning as the vaccine king, after cutting a deal with Pfizer to make his country the “model state” of the Covid inoculation. He’s offering up vast amounts of anonymised health data, to help Pfizer learn more, and supplies have come rolling in.
Israel, a country the size of Wales, will soon be vaccinating as many people a day as Italy, France and Germany put together. Already three-quarters of its over-60s (those most likely to die from the virus) have been protected. The rest will be covered within days, not weeks.
Israel won’t see a collapsing R-number or plummeting infections: not for a while, at least. The main vaccine effect should be a break in the link between infections, hospitalisations and deaths. Protecting a small number of people should mean big results, given that the oldest 20 per cent account for 90 per cent of virus fatalities. If all goes as planned, then Israel will have downgraded Covid from a fatal virus to a bug which is nasty, but no longer the killer we have come to know.
The vaccine dividend should be discernible in Israeli hospitals very soon. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute reckon that the proportion of over-60s in critical care will have roughly halved within two weeks. By Easter, it thinks, most Covid deaths will be eliminated in Israel. It will be the first major country in the world to achieve this.
And, all going well, Britain should be the second. Our vaccination programme is still steaming ahead. The Prime Minister’s first deadline – 13 million vaccinations by the middle of next month – remains in sight. Just over half of Britain’s Covid-19 deaths are among the over-80s, almost all of whom should have been offered a vaccine within a fortnight. Add another two weeks for the vaccine’s protection to set in, and the number dying from Covid-19 should be half what it would otherwise have been by the end of next month.
This is the projection by the Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group, which has had a strikingly good track record since it was set up to monitor the pandemic. If Nadhim Zahawi’s vaccination programme goes roughly to plan, it says, hospital admissions will be half what they’d otherwise be by mid-March. Intensive care admissions will be down by only a third: a lower number because those admitted tend to be younger. But overall, the Covid-19 burden on the health service will look very different very soon.
While plenty can still go wrong, ministers remain pretty confident – and more than they let on. Some in government think the official target will be easily surpassed – although they’ve been told never to confess as much in public. Kate Bingham, who masterminded the vaccine procurement programme, almost let the cat out of the bag recently by saying the schedule will be “met – and possibly exceeded”.
If she’s right, and if Covid deaths fall by 80 per cent by mid-March, can lockdown restrictions still be justified? Politically, it’s a difficult question and battle lines are already being sketched out. Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Health Secretary, has said that we won’t be able to go back to normal “while the virus will still be circulating” – which it’s likely to keep doing throughout the summer. Even with hospital numbers down, he says, Covid-19 can still be a debilitating disease with lasting side effects.
At this point, what would Matt Hancock say? Once everyone likely to die from the virus has been vaccinated, would he be prepared to lift restrictions and be accused of letting the virus rip amongst the young? I asked him recently and he hinted that he was ready for the fight. “There are many illnesses in the world,” he said. “We have to live our lives.”
These words sound odd coming from a minister who usually argues for tighter lockdown. Only last weekend he was privately arguing it was time to stop people exercising (ie, walking) with a friend. But there’s not necessarily a contradiction. In Israel, it’s argued that tighter lockdowns mean earlier relaxation – because the virus, if it gets out control, slows vaccination. The country’s Covid tsar, Nachman Ash, has said he’s ready to unlock even if virus levels are still high. “Our strategy is to inoculate the people who are at the highest risk,” he said, “so we can open the economy even if the number of infected has still not gone down.”
Sceptics grumble that Israel’s example may not be so instructive because it’s unique: a tiny, highly organised country with the world’s best digitised health records. It doesn’t need to slow things down by asking vaccinated people to wait 15 minutes to see if they suffer an anaphylactic shock: they know who’s at risk because their technology tells them. But the basic theory Israel is testing is that Covid’s power to kill can be stopped quite quickly. That, if proven, will be a universal lesson.
Many Tories are getting nervous and want the Prime Minister to commit to relaxing as soon as the top-risk group are vaccinated. But he has an obvious retort: that it’s still a theory. Even Israel is waiting to see what the hospital numbers show, whether the theory pans out. All depends on how the relationship between infection numbers, hospital numbers and deaths really does change. Britain will find out soon, but not for a few weeks.
This week, Netanyahu told his Cabinet that it’s precisely because they’re so close to the finish line that they need to keep discipline now. “This is how we will save lives,” he said. “This is how we will be first in the world to emerge from the coronavirus.” It would be quite a boast for Boris Johnson if Britain were to be the second.
Back to COVID… The new Lilly mab is banlanivimab. Your homework is to decode it.
EAsy
“We have to live our lives.”
Can anyone hear a bus, or is it just me?
Remember how we all looked at the news from Italy last year and wondered how bad it could get? Yesterday's (delayed) statistics now put England as having a higher death rate than Italy.
Can anyone hear a bus, or is it just me?
You never hear the one you are shoved under!
“There are many illnesses in the world,” he said. “We have to live our lives.”
Oooft.
On one hand, they're right. On one hand we don't stop riding bikes because of the risk of an injury. The risk benefit equation says riding bikes or < insert many other situations > is worth it.
On the other hand, I hear that bus...
Trouble is, so many people once they have had the vaccine and lockdown eases will just do whatever the hell they like.
Ignoring that they might be able to pass on the virus to others.
basically garden centres (particularly with cafes) are going to be horrible plague pits
This thing really does seem like it is so far from over. Quick look at Isreal stats on worldometer show that cases are still rising pretty rapidly and deaths too. Going to be another few weeks before there is any effect if there even is one. I mean, it's just not worth thinking about, but what if this just doesn't really work? What if this Brazilian strain, or SA strain really does render vaccines much less effective? Feeling absolutely doom and gloom today. Maybe it's the sh**ty weather. So grim recently 🙁
Telegraph again via H&L. Doesn't fill me with confidence.
https://www.hl.co.uk/news/2021/1/15/ministers-say-dark-forces-threaten-our-vaccine-supply-but-a-summer-of-bragging-may-be-more-likely
“There are many illnesses in the world,” he said. “We have to live our lives.”
He has got a point though. We can't in a state of lockdown indefintely, at some point we are going to have to live with it to some degree. We're social animals and that can't be stopped forever.
The hope is we live with it post-vaccine where it's impact is tiny, but I suppose there is also a chance we have to live with it by vastly increasing hospital capacity, decreased international trave; and an accepted risk to the elderly.
The majority can accept a lockdown with a rough end in site that we have now, tell people it's like this for another 18 months and you may get a different reaction.
You see, that’s where my plan for quarantine in the UK comes unstuck…🤦♂️
There's a plan? 🙂
stcolin - pretty much through the worst bit of the winter, so at least the light/weather WILL improve.... unless you are on the other side of the planet of course.
pretty much through the worst bit of the winter
Are we? It's only mid January.
I mean, it’s just not worth thinking about, but what if this just doesn’t really work?
Israel has only been vaccinating for 3 weeks which means the majority of those vaccinated still haven't developed any response to the vaccine. Wait a few weeks and their stats should start to show the change - the world will be watching with you.
The hope is we live with it post-vaccine where it’s impact is tiny, but I suppose there is also a chance we have to live with it by vastly increasing hospital capacity, decreased international travel; and an accepted risk to the elderly.
So it could end up giving us a better, more robust NHS, lower international travel emissions and lower the cost of the elderly on the public finances? Up to you to make the call whether the first two are worth the third and the call on whether we could do the first two anyway.
Doesn’t fill me with confidence.
That is really depressing reading. Again, UK politicians talk to the UK population as if the rest of the world can't hear what they are saying. At PMQs just this week the PM was still crowing about the great british "Oxford" vaccine... (amazingly in answer to a question about the Scottish fishing industry).
Standard nationalist bow lacks from Boris and chums.
Torygraph expounding letting it rip (give or take).
Yesterday there Brexit drum banging was "my dad was right about Brexit, it's briliant innit".
Nothing new.
Can anyone hear a bus, or is it just me?
All the notice most of us get is 'mind that bus. What bus? Splat!...”
BBC are quoting ' a leading virologist' who says the Brazil variant has been detected in the UK, and that health services there (Brazil) are collapsing amidst a surge in cases.
I'm trying to stay positive but can't help wondering if the light is not the end of the tunnel, but rather an oncoming train.
Didn't the article suggest it has been here for quite some time? I'm not seeing any light at the moment either, but trying to stay positive.
There will be a constant stream of different versions of the virus, just like we get with the cold and flu. The issue is whether they turn into something more vicious or whether the vaccines become ineffective. When that happens all the current vaccinations will be useless. I hope it doesn't happen but we have to plan ahead taking into account that it can.
Stricter supermarket rules for Wales being posed.
Currently, it is the law for people to wear masks in public indoor spaces, which includes supermarkets and other essential retailers, but a number of other measures are only classed as guidance.
Mr Drakeford previously hinted he wanted to see measures in shops - such as stickers marking 2m (6ft) distances, number limits and one-way systems - return to levels seen back in March during the first lockdown.
He said changes, set to be announced on Friday, could involve putting into law measures surrounding shopping which are currently only guidance.
About time. The only issue is how will the shop workers be backed up? Certainly there isn't the resources to put a Police Officer at each store to enforce it and just making it law won't really stop the hardcore deniers being abusive towards the shop staff.
Indeed. I seem to recall tired suggested that amending the vaccine for the new UK strain might not take more than a couple of months. If so, and it also applies to Brazil strain, then things aren't quite so bleak.
there is also a chance we have to live with it by vastly increasing hospital capacity
How? Even if the government shook the magic money tree to fund it, we haven't got a magic doctors and nurses tree to actually deliver it.
Indeed. I seem to recall tired suggested that amending the vaccine for the new UK strain might not take more than a couple of months. If so, and it also applies to Brazil strain, then things aren’t quite so bleak.
We just have to be careful around the time it takes for the new strain and it's effects to become known and how quickly we can re-engineer a new vaccine and get it to market. The longer this goes on for and the larger selection of vaccines we have to choose from should make the process faster. We should also have the situation of a new strain only bypassing certain vaccines, not all of them too. this is not a one-fight battle that a lot of people thin it is.
The strains issue for me is why I think we will be wearing masks for a lot longer than people think