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Vaccine Progress, Approval, and Deployment

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brad465

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The Government have said we've now completed offering all over 50s and high risk groups a first dose 3 days early:


All over-50s and those in high risk groups in the UK have now been offered a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, the government has announced.
It means ministers have met their target of offering a first dose to the top nine priority groups by 15 April.
Under-50s are expected to begin to be invited for their jab in the coming days, with those in their late 40s expected to be first in England.
More than 32 million people in the UK have had their first dose.
And on Saturday a record 475,230 second doses were given out, with more than 7.6 million people now fully vaccinated.
The government said it was on track to offer a first dose to all adults by the end of July.

I'm surprised the Government have announced this rather late, given they'd want as much publicity as possible for it, and as a result none of the main front pages tomorrow feature it (sticking with Duke related stories and/or Cameron's lobbying antics).
 

Snow1964

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Anyone over 44 (45 and over) in England can now book on NHS vaccines website

or can wait until your local surgery gets around to inviting you.
 

35B

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Anyone over 44 (45 and over) in England can now book on NHS vaccines website

or can wait until your local surgery gets around to inviting you.
If they haven't already - I'm 46, and was invited by my surgery a fortnight ago.
 

hwl

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The Government have said we've now completed offering all over 50s and high risk groups a first dose 3 days early:




I'm surprised the Government have announced this rather late, given they'd want as much publicity as possible for it, and as a result none of the main front pages tomorrow feature it (sticking with Duke related stories and/or Cameron's lobbying antics).
The booking website for England crashed, they probably have enough publicity for today hence headline tomorrow might be more useful?
 

Pakenhamtrain

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Meanwhile us in Australia are watching our vaccination plan go to the dogs. No longer is the AZ recommended for under 50s. The AZ vax is the one we went all in on because we have the manufacturing ability.
 

Bantamzen

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Meanwhile us in Australia are watching our vaccination plan go to the dogs. No longer is the AZ recommended for under 50s. The AZ vax is the one we went all in on because we have the manufacturing ability.
It also appears the Australian government have turned their nose up at the J&J variety too. Maybe Canberra are getting a bit to used to their self-imposed international isolation?
 

nlogax

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It also appears the Australian government have turned their nose up at the J&J variety too. Maybe Canberra are getting a bit to used to their self-imposed international isolation?

Australia will soon be joining NZ in an official Australasian isolation pact. It's pretty depressing, especially if you happen to live there and like to travel to other parts of the world.
 

Pakenhamtrain

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It also appears the Australian government have turned their nose up at the J&J variety too. Maybe Canberra are getting a bit to used to their self-imposed international isolation?
There's some sort of issue in working out a deal. The blood clots thing has scared them off AZ for U50's. Now most of us have to wait for Pfizer to rock up.


Most of the vaccine issues are a government who over promised and are under delivering. A grand total of 1.23 million doses have been administered. They said by the end of March that a 4 million doses would be administered. They missed by about 3.3 million.

The whole rollout has been a complete shambles. It's no surprise. It's been the states that have done the heavy lifting so far.

Australia will soon be joining NZ in an official Australasian isolation pact. It's pretty depressing, especially if you happen to live there and like to travel to other parts of the world.
Like me. I had started filling out my passport application last year before it all kicked off. It's still sitting here half finished. I suspect by the time everything opens I'll have bills and a house to pay off.

People don't even want to cross state borders in case it leaks out again and the premiers start shutting the door.
 
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nlogax

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Like me. I had started filling out my passport application last year before it all kicked off. It's still sitting here half finished.

People don't even want to cross state borders in case it leaks out again and the premiers start shutting the door.

Really sorry to hear that. From this faraway perspective it looks like the governments of Australia and New Zealand seem intent on keeping out the rest of the world for some considerable time. Not sure how accurate that is but I hope the slow uptick in international travel changes some minds in coming months.
 

Bantamzen

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There's some sort of issue in working out a deal. The blood clots thing has scared them off AZ for U50's. Now most of us have to wait for Pfizer to rock up.


Most of the vaccine issues are a government who over promised and are under delivering. A grand total of 1.23 million doses have been administered. They said by the end of March that a 4 million doses would be administered. They missed by about 3.3 million.

The whole rollout has been a complete shambles. It's no surprise. It's been the states that have done the heavy lifting so far.
Its one of the few areas we here in the UK have done well, pretty much everyone that was vulnerable had had both shots and almost half the entire population have had at least one. Other governments around the world seem to be pretty spooked by any minute risk from the vaccines, even though minute risks will always exist.
 

YorkshireBear

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US advises pause in vaccinations by J&J vaccine due to 1 death amongst 6 cases of rare blood clots. 7 million J&J doses administered in US.
 

Pakenhamtrain

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Really sorry to hear that. From this faraway perspective it looks like the governments of Australia and New Zealand seem intent on keeping out the rest of the world for some considerable time. Not sure how accurate that is but I hope the slow uptick in international travel changes some minds in coming months.
I think it's because were are a victim of our own success. Suppression has turned into elimination. Both counties have natural barrier. We are our own islands.
After the 4 month lock down the attitude became keep it out of the community at all costs.
We are letting people back into Australia via hotel quarantine. If it escapes hotel quarantine we aim to squash an outbreak.

The aggressive strategy is popular. The Western Australian election was held a month ago and the incumbent government won in a landslide. The opposition was wiped out to the point the entire Liberal party MPs in the lower house could carpool with a each other and still have seats remaining in the car.
 
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brad465

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There are multiple things I can see at play here with regards to all these blood clot concerns and pausing rollouts. Firstly never has the world rolled out vaccines at this speed and scale before, such that side effects will be more numerous, but remain a low proportion overall. Also this is what happens when we go with a strategy heavily reliant on a vaccine so it gets fast tracked through trials and approval, some concerns get found out retrospectively.

There were other users on this forum and elsewhere saying before any vaccine was approved that they're not anti-vax but had concerns about covid ones due to the speed of the trials compared to normal durations, and, while the blood clot issues at the moment doesn't look disastrous, this is one reason why there are folk with this view.
 

Pakenhamtrain

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There are multiple things I can see at play here with regards to all these blood clot concerns and pausing rollouts. Firstly never has the world rolled out vaccines at this speed and scale before, such that side effects will be more numerous, but remain a low proportion overall. Also this is what happens when we go with a strategy heavily reliant on a vaccine so it gets fast tracked through trials and approval, some concerns get found out retrospectively.

There were other users on this forum and elsewhere saying before any vaccine was approved that they're not anti-vax but had concerns about covid ones due to the speed of the trials compared to normal durations, and, while the blood clot issues at the moment doesn't look disastrous, this is one reason why there are folk with this view.
I would think in AZ's case they will be looking at the data and be making tweaks to the vaccine in due course. The hurdle then is to convince people that it's actually been fixed.
 

Ediswan

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Also this is what happens when we go with a strategy heavily reliant on a vaccine so it gets fast tracked through trials and approval, some concerns get found out retrospectively.
The incidence of blood clots is far too low to be identified as a side effect by normal size clinical trials. According to the EMA briefing last week, the effect is close to the limit of what can be detected even with the millions of doses that have been administered.
 

Dave91131

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With reference to the title of this thread;

Various news outlets are today quoting Boris Johnson as saying that the drop in cases and hospitalisations is down to the lockdown, not the rollout of the vaccines.

I'm done.
 

Cdd89

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Also this is what happens when we go with a strategy heavily reliant on a vaccine so it gets fast tracked through trials and approval, some concerns get found out retrospectively.
This is true, but equally we knew from the trial data that severe outcomes were (say) less than 1 in 30,000, or whatever the sample size was, and could advise on that basis alone that the vaccines were safer than contracting Covid at all age groups.

Barring some sort of surprising long term outcome (Long term outcomes are equally probable from Covid as from a vaccine, and Covid only has a ~9 month head start), there is no inherent discovery that can be made that would change the risk landcsape for approved vaccines as compared with Covid for the ages in the trial group, the only reason for this chopping and changing is that our knowledge of the relative risks between vaccines is changing.
 

Domh245

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There are multiple things I can see at play here with regards to all these blood clot concerns and pausing rollouts. Firstly never has the world rolled out vaccines at this speed and scale before, such that side effects will be more numerous, but remain a low proportion overall. Also this is what happens when we go with a strategy heavily reliant on a vaccine so it gets fast tracked through trials and approval, some concerns get found out retrospectively.

There were other users on this forum and elsewhere saying before any vaccine was approved that they're not anti-vax but had concerns about covid ones due to the speed of the trials compared to normal durations, and, while the blood clot issues at the moment doesn't look disastrous, this is one reason why there are folk with this view.

Not really. The trials carried out were fairly normal in terms of the number of participants, and as the clots are an immediate (within 2 weeks) reaction to the vaccine, the longer stages between trials and approval would not have changed anything here. The only way this would have been detected is with a significantly larger trial that would have had enough people to start picking up these ultra rare effects.

These blood clots are more a combination of a much larger rollout than usual (this winter's bumper flu vaccine rollout managed 24.6m or so), to far more groups than usual and with significantly higher scrutiny.

With reference to the title of this thread;

Various news outlets are today quoting Boris Johnson as saying that the drop in cases and hospitalisations is down to the lockdown, not the rollout of the vaccines.

I'm done.

He's not wrong though. The lockdown is what has brought cases down, and consequently also brought down hospitalisations and deaths. The vaccine rollout has accelerated this, but absolutely hasn't been the cause of it. You can look at log graphs of death rates by age and see how they all start out decreasing at roughly the same rate, but then as the vaccine programme has progressed (plus 2 weeks) the death rates have then decreased further to the extent that now the 45-64 age group has about as many deaths/week as the 75-84 age group.

You only have to look at places like Germany which has a reasonably well advanced vaccine rollout by this point, yet also have started to see an uptick in cases and deaths because the vaccine in and of itself won't make covid go away (or even manageable straight away). The vaccines mean that as we ease, we won't see any significant resurgence in hospitalisations and deaths
 

DustyBin

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With reference to the title of this thread;

Various news outlets are today quoting Boris Johnson as saying that the drop in cases and hospitalisations is down to the lockdown, not the rollout of the vaccines.

I'm done.

I've just posted the same thing on the roadmap thread. I couldn't believe what I was hearing!

He's not wrong though. The lockdown is what has brought cases down, and consequently also brought down hospitalisations and deaths. The vaccine rollout has accelerated this, but absolutely hasn't been the cause of it. You can look at log graphs of death rates by age and see how they all start out decreasing at roughly the same rate, but then as the vaccine programme has progressed (plus 2 weeks) the death rates have then decreased further to the extent that now the 45-64 age group has about as many deaths/week as the 75-84 age group.

You only have to look at places like Germany which has a reasonably well advanced vaccine rollout by this point, yet also have started to see an uptick in cases and deaths because the vaccine in and of itself won't make covid go away (or even manageable straight away). The vaccines mean that as we ease, we won't see any significant resurgence in hospitalisations and deaths

Without getting into a debate over whether cases were declining prior to lockdown, and how many people have followed the rules etc. we wouldn't be where we are without the vaccines. What Boris appeared to saying was that only lockdowns can control the virus, he basically dismissed everything else. I find that worrying as it plays straight into the hands of the lockdown enthusiasts, right when we're opening up again. I also took it as a thinly veiled threat that we could see further lockdowns, but maybe that's just me....
 
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YorkshireBear

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Not really. The trials carried out were fairly normal in terms of the number of participants, and as the clots are an immediate (within 2 weeks) reaction to the vaccine, the longer stages between trials and approval would not have changed anything here. The only way this would have been detected is with a significantly larger trial that would have had enough people to start picking up these ultra rare effects.

These blood clots are more a combination of a much larger rollout than usual (this winter's bumper flu vaccine rollout managed 24.6m or so), to far more groups than usual and with significantly higher scrutiny.



He's not wrong though. The lockdown is what has brought cases down, and consequently also brought down hospitalisations and deaths. The vaccine rollout has accelerated this, but absolutely hasn't been the cause of it. You can look at log graphs of death rates by age and see how they all start out decreasing at roughly the same rate, but then as the vaccine programme has progressed (plus 2 weeks) the death rates have then decreased further to the extent that now the 45-64 age group has about as many deaths/week as the 75-84 age group.

You only have to look at places like Germany which has a reasonably well advanced vaccine rollout by this point, yet also have started to see an uptick in cases and deaths because the vaccine in and of itself won't make covid go away (or even manageable straight away). The vaccines mean that as we ease, we won't see any significant resurgence in hospitalisations and deaths

I agree with this RE what Boris has said. Lockdown caused it, vaccines have accelerated many aspects of it and made it more effective which is great and proves they do have a great impact but cases started dropping rapidly before much of the population was vaccinated.

Vaccines are why the easing of restrictions should be permanent though of course!

I agree with though it's a stupid thing to say as so easily can be taken out of context
 

cuccir

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But Johnson is right, if we're talking about now in relation to the peak in January.

Lockdown brought cases down, vaccines will keep them down.
 

Bantamzen

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He's not wrong though. The lockdown is what has brought cases down, and consequently also brought down hospitalisations and deaths. The vaccine rollout has accelerated this, but absolutely hasn't been the cause of it. You can look at log graphs of death rates by age and see how they all start out decreasing at roughly the same rate, but then as the vaccine programme has progressed (plus 2 weeks) the death rates have then decreased further to the extent that now the 45-64 age group has about as many deaths/week as the 75-84 age group.

You only have to look at places like Germany which has a reasonably well advanced vaccine rollout by this point, yet also have started to see an uptick in cases and deaths because the vaccine in and of itself won't make covid go away (or even manageable straight away). The vaccines mean that as we ease, we won't see any significant resurgence in hospitalisations and deaths
Well actually he's not, infections peaked at the end of December before the latest lockdown came into play. Funnily enough a similar picture emerges around the start of Lockdown v2.0, the peak occurred around the same time as it was mentioned. A cynical person, I mean really cynical might suggest that the government is trying to fit lockdowns around the peaks, not that I can think why they want to.
 

bramling

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There are multiple things I can see at play here with regards to all these blood clot concerns and pausing rollouts. Firstly never has the world rolled out vaccines at this speed and scale before, such that side effects will be more numerous, but remain a low proportion overall. Also this is what happens when we go with a strategy heavily reliant on a vaccine so it gets fast tracked through trials and approval, some concerns get found out retrospectively.

There were other users on this forum and elsewhere saying before any vaccine was approved that they're not anti-vax but had concerns about covid ones due to the speed of the trials compared to normal durations, and, while the blood clot issues at the moment doesn't look disastrous, this is one reason why there are folk with this view.

It’s enough to have tipped my scales back to not wanting the vaccine now. I had just about reached the point where I was marginally more inclined to have it than not, but I’m not so sure now. If I was older than that might change things.

I certainly intend to hold off a bit.
 

Darandio

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Lockdown has not been in any way comparable to the first two, certainly not the first anyway. Anyone who has been out and about over the last 97 days should have seen that with their own eyes.

It seems clear that it's a mixture of both to me.
 

Dave91131

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It’s enough to have tipped my scales back to not wanting the vaccine now. I had just about reached the point where I was marginally more inclined to have it than not, but I’m not so sure now. If I was older than that might change things.

I certainly intend to hold off a bit.

+1.

I should perhaps also add that, based on current and recent reports regarding risks and side effects, I would 100% at present decline the AZ jab.
 

Domh245

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Without getting into a debate over whether cases were declining prior to lockdown, and how many people have followed the rules etc. we wouldn't be where we are without the vaccines. What Boris appeared to saying was that only lockdowns can control the virus, he basically dismissed everything else. I find that worrying as it plays straight into the hands of the lockdown enthusiasts, right when we're opening up again. I also took it as a thinly veiled threat that we could see further lockdowns, but maybe that's just me....

Well, strictly speaking the vaccines will control the virus, but if you just "jab & go" with high case rates, you'll continue to see high levels of hospitalisations and deaths. Brining case rates down and vaccinating simultaneously means that we're looking at low 1000s of deaths more at most from this point, not the hundreds per day as in other countries.

In the context of thousands of high tens of thousands of new cases each day as we saw around the new year, you can never hope to beat that with vaccines - the rate at which you can get them into arms, and the time it takes for immunity to develop means it's a loosing battle. Even now, a full lockdown wouldn't be required to 'control' the virus here as we've now got enough people vaccinated that it will be unable to spread to any great deal, and we continue to vaccinate an order more magnitude each day than are infected.

It's a misspeak from Boris for sure, but it's not the doom & gloom you fear.

Well actually he's not, infections peaked at the end of December before the latest lockdown came into play. Funnily enough a similar picture emerges around the start of Lockdown v2.0, the peak occurred around the same time as it was mentioned. A cynical person, I mean really cynical might suggest that the government is trying to fit lockdowns around the peaks, not that I can think why they want to.

You'd have to be pretty cynical, and have a lovely shiny hat... When you consider that London and the South East (majority of the UK population, and where case rates were highest) went into de-facto lockdown on the 21st, and the closing of schools & businesses for holidays, it would seem pretty logical that the peak happened before lockdown was actually declared.

The key (and unfortunately unprovable) question is whether without the lockdown, would cases have continued to rise again. It'd have been a rather spectacular and unexplainable turn of events for them to have not continued rising once the country had returned to "normal" post christmas

+1.

I should perhaps also add that, based on current and recent reports regarding risks and side effects, I would 100% at present decline the AZ jab.

I hope you don't drive anywhere then, seeing as the risk of being killed or seriously injured in a road traffic incident is an order of magnitude higher than the risk from any of the vaccines
 

Bantamzen

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You'd have to be pretty cynical, and have a lovely shiny hat... When you consider that London and the South East (majority of the UK population, and where case rates were highest) went into de-facto lockdown on the 21st, and the closing of schools & businesses for holidays, it would seem pretty logical that the peak happened before lockdown was actually declared.
Well where I am we've been in de-facto lockdown for pretty much an entire year, so the London argument doesn't hold water for me I'm afraid. As for the peaks versus lockdown announcements, well let's just say after 30+ years in the public sector, much of that around statistics / planning IT systems, I have become very cynical. And for good reason, this sort of thing is exactly the sort of thing that goes on all the time, and has for a very long time indeed. The fact that it has happened twice, in fact if we are being honest 3 times in under 12 months only lends more weight to the suspicion that this is little more than political gesturing.

The key (and unfortunately unprovable) question is whether without the lockdown, would cases have continued to rise again. It'd have been a rather spectacular and unexplainable turn of events for them to have not continued rising once the country had returned to "normal" post christmas
We will never know this year, but the infection rates have followed fairly common trends with other types of respiratory viruses, so there is a fairly good chance that what we have actually been seeing is the natural path of the virus. We see similar trends with viruses like that those that cause influenza, often pushing up in the Autumn months and peaking around December / January. Not unexpected really as these are the months were outdoor interactions reduce, and indoor interactions increasing, particularly in lesser ventilated buildings where airborne viruses prevail the most. I suspect if you dug around you could find plenty of models that would predict a similar track. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if SAGE hadn't privately given the government the very same whilst making the worst case ones public. As per above, this is really not unheard of.
 

hwl

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It’s enough to have tipped my scales back to not wanting the vaccine now. I had just about reached the point where I was marginally more inclined to have it than not, but I’m not so sure now. If I was older than that might change things.

I certainly intend to hold off a bit.
The clotting problems issues are now well characterised and can be diagnosed with a PF4 antibody test and low platelet count.

Treatment with / without:
Blood thinners but not heparin!
No Platelet transfusions despite low platelet count - it only makes the clots worse.
Something to damp down the immune system, so it does not produce the PF4 antibodies. (Multiple options with varying availabilities but all available in UK).

The Ox-AZ and J&J problem window appears to be between 5 and 14 days post first jab which is the same as the window for Heparin clotting issues.

UK A&E departments have been briefed on treatment.
 

Markdvdman

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I had my first vaccine today and I was lucky it was the Pfizer jab! Seems to be quite a bit in Wales today - my arm aches a touch but no after affects as yet. As for the politicians THEY told us the vaccine would be the way out - yet you Drakefords and all that keep on banging on about 3rd waves - ever the negatives to threaten lockdowns ALL the time! It is utter madness taking our freedom away whenever they feel like it!
 
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