It does seem that Brits do spend an awfful lot of their time criticizing Europe/the EU/ the mainland whereas, there is very little mention of the UK in EU media.
The reality is Brexit is over done and dusted and the UK is unlikely to rejoin in my lifetime.
The UK and the EU are neighbours not friends and although collaborating on some things they are competitors not partners.
Like all politicians what UVD says is to satisfy her base, just like the things that Boris Johnson and Dominic Rabb says are meant to satisfy their base.
LeSving wrote:
Not until the detailed reason for the deadly side effect, and a way to prevent it is found.
You can keep pushing this rhetoric all you want, but the fact remains that there is nothing whatsoever to indicate that the vaccine has been responsible for any clotting events at all. The incidence of clotting in the vaccinated population is lower than the background level in the general population.
If Norway wants to run its vaccination programme on the basis of stopping every time something unfortunate (but PROB99.99 unrelated) happens to a vaccinated person then by all means they can do that, but it’ll mean they’re unlikely ever to complete the programme.
The message today is very clear:
1. No indication that any vaccine causes clotting.
2. Even if every clotting event logged was directly caused by vaccine, it would still be worth continuing because the risk of Covid-19 is orders of magnitude greater.
gallois wrote:
The UK and the EU are neighbours not friends and although collaborating on some things they are competitors not partners.
No country has friends, only interests….
gallois wrote:
It does seem that Brits do spend an awfful lot of their time criticizing Europe/the EU/ the mainland whereas, there is very little mention of the UK in EU media.
Fully agree – if it’s not for Covid vaccine or occasional breaches of the Ireland agreement, UK is simply no longer a topic in most European media. Or to put it that way: It gets its fair share of attention given the relative size. Obviously depends where you are in the EU: In some parts of France or in Ireland it is obviously more of the topic while in Romania less of it…
Fuji_Abound wrote:
which I find astonishing given that we are in the middle of a world wide effort to deal with Covid without any place for petty politcs.
I would not confuse multiple efforts that happen at the same time across the world with a world wide effort. In my opinion we don’t even have a Europe wide effort…
LeSving wrote:
Anyway, in Norway it will not be used in a while. Not until the detailed reason for the deadly side effect, and a way to prevent it is found.
More fool Norway.
No medicine is 100% safe, yet certain countries seem to be demanding that the AZ vaccine alone reaches some standard no other medicine is held to, and also seem to ignore the results of 15M+ vaccinations in the UK. They do this in a face of a virus that if you get it, and are say, middle aged you face at least a 0.1% of dying from it and a 5% chance of being seriously injured by it… for an unproven link, which in any case the odds are about 1 in quarter of a million even if you could prove with certainty that there was a link. It’s mindboggling.
None of this makes scientific sense.
Every vaccine – indeed, every “drug” – has side effects, and nearly all “drugs” have side effects orders of magnitude more prevalent than AZ (or Pfizer, which also has side effects, at about 2x the rate of AZ for the serious ones, but nobody talks about that).
The clotting incidents and deaths are running at the single digit ppm level which is right down in the noise, and probably in the same region as getting run over by a bus. In fact it takes only seconds on google to find the stats on that: According to the Department for Transport, from 2013 to 2019 an average of 24 pedestrians per year were killed in accidents involving buses or coaches in Great Britain
Reportedly, they are going to revise the instruction leaflet now. I recall reading, about 20 years ago, a research report on a particular brand of the Pill (a GF at the time was interested 
). The test sample was 2k and a couple of years later 2 got pregnant. Yes, just 2. That is way less than most people would expect. The real life figure for a Pill failure, some would say, is more like 20% 
Joking aside, the researchers looked into those 2 and found that due to illiteracy neither was able to read the instructions on the packet.
Maybe the “CYA” procedure will be to update the leaflet, and give some people (women on the Pill, reportedly, being one option) the Pfizer one, just like some groups are contraindicated already for the Pfizer one (people with a history of allergic reactions).
172driver wrote:
Fuji_Abound wrote: The post Brexit treatment that has been dished out to the UK makes me regret by previous vote.Not sure what you mean here. I just had to spend 6 weeks in continental Europe (family emergency) and in all the conversations with my friends regarding Brexit (to the extent that we did talk about it), the consensus was one of regret and bewilderment. Don’t confuse what the UK papers write and what hapless politicians a la VDL say with reality. What Covid has shown up in a brutally clear light is the mind boggling incompetence of the EU, both on national levels (the bickering in the country I was in was something to behold) and of course in Brussels.
I think you do me a disservice.
I hope I was clear I wasnt referring to the average Jo., but to the politicians. My experience of the man in the street is the same as you, albeit I think with certain factions the political antagonism filters down to the populace – our respective fisherman are a very good example, although largely their furry is directed at the politicans as the route cause. The danger is however these things can easily spread.
alioth wrote:
for an unproven link, which in any case the odds are about 1 in quarter of a million even if you could prove with certainty that there was a link. It’s mindboggling.
Indeed. I’m pretty sure AZ now regrets having gotten into this mess at all. No good deed goes unpunished….
172driver wrote:
alioth wrote:
for an unproven link, which in any case the odds are about 1 in quarter of a million even if you could prove with certainty that there was a link. It’s mindboggling.Indeed. I’m pretty sure AZ now regrets having gotten into this mess at all. No good deed goes unpunished….
But do they, so far they seem to have come out of it remarkably well despite the efforts to the contrary.
I think actually their standing will be improved as a consequence albiet in the long run.
LeSving wrote:
EMA has never de-cleared the vaccine.
I never said that it did. But it did review it and several countries had stopped using the vaccine pending the review.
The UK and the EU are neighbours not friends and although collaborating on some things they are competitors not partners.
Is that a widely-held continental or urban Weltanschauung?
I think the overwhelming view in rural Britain is that life is infinitely easier and more pleasant when one makes the effort to ensure that neighbours are friends. All it requires is the right mindset for some give and take – recognising that the former can be more satisfying than the latter.
