With regard to the blood clots, the JCVI / MHRA in the UK have just said that under 30s should opt for a non-AZ vaccine “if one is available in their area”.
Pressed to clarify, they said it was a “preference out of the utmost caution”, not a directive, and that they had no serious safety concerns.
They showed some good charts of risks from covid vs risks from the vaccine across different age ranges.
EMA also seems to be saying there have been some similar clots in the J&J trials. If they show up in the trials, with much lower patient numbers, that suggests a much higher incidence that we’re seeing with AZ.
Peter wrote:
My guess is that travel to/from these countries will be tightly controlled. That’s the obvious solution.
Don’t think so.
As soon as we have “typical European vaccination levels” in the European countries, the problem is solved (at least as long as the vaccine is effective against the upcoming mutations).
Measels is more infectious than Covid – and we do not see too many deaths from local outbreaks of imported cases. It will happen that travelers from other countries with lower vaccination compliance will bring cases into the EU – but at 70 -80% vaccination level here it will most likely be contained as very local outbreaks.
Graham wrote:
With regard to the blood clots, the JCVI / MHRA in the UK have just said that under 30s should opt for a non-AZ vaccine “if one is available in their area”.
I don’t get it – the latest data I had heard was that there are no such cases in the UK – at least according to officially published data. Why on earth should JCVI/MHRA advice action against something that does not happen in the UK at all?!?
Malibuflyer wrote:
I’m honestly happy for your wife – but she is in group 2 along with many others who did not have a chance to get vaccinated yet. So nothing got better except the GPs (and their friends and family) now got the opportunity to jump the line.
Isn’t this whole ‘group’ or ‘tier’ system totally insane? Other than medical staff – which obviously includes MedEwok’s wife – and perhaps residents of care homes, the emphasis should be on getting as many jabs in as many arms as quickly as possible. That’s the ONLY way to slow the spread of an epidemic, not only Covid. Endless faffing around with who gets it first is counterproductive.
Malibuflyer wrote:
One of the most stupid things politicians in Germany have done so far
Why?
It was always said that subject to availability, vaccines which can be handled by a normal GP practice or even pharmacies should be available through them. That is where 99% of vaccines are usually distributed, so why make an exception here?
GP’s can certainly do a good deed here particularly for people who are anxious or have health issues which need monitoring. And quite a few sceptics may well be positively influenced if their trusted GP will endorse and possibly apply the vaccine.
Peter wrote:
So I reckon the existing proposals (vacc passport + tests both ways) are fiction.
What is the problem with a vaccination passport? As a matter of fact, they have existed for decades, i just found mine and will take it to the vaccination so they can enter my vaccination thre. It is the official yellow WHO passport which has been necessary for ever to travel to certain places.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
What is the problem with a vaccination passport? As a matter of fact, they have existed for decades, i just found mine and will take it to the vaccination so they can enter my vaccination thre. It is the official yellow WHO passport which has been necessary for ever to travel to certain places.
I’ve got a whole collection of these booklets ! The issue I see is that they are extremely easy to forge. Back in the day nobody had a quality printer at home, today everyone does. Unfortunately, these WHO booklets have never been upgraded with any security features. That, of course, was not a problem until now. I have no idea how this is going to pan out, but the vax passport debate has already started here and is actually moving faster than I thought. As usual, government and politicians are way behind the curve, this is mainly driven by business. IMHO this is going to be pretty straightforward, especially for air travel and, initially, cruise lines.
Malibuflyer wrote:
I don’t get it – the latest data I had heard was that there are no such cases in the UK – at least according to officially published data. Why on earth should JCVI/MHRA advice action against something that does not happen in the UK at all?!?
7 Deaths in the UK from it and 30 non-fatals – presumably some with life-changing results
Presumably all their families will be suing HMG…
We are not told anything about the age/gender/prior health etc of those affected…but I’d say they were all young as a guess
The other EU countries were not using the vax on old people while we were, so our vax stat’s on outcomes were heavily weighted by the huge number of older persons vaxed who seem not to be affected by the issue. This is how you get to the (?deliberately?) misleading stat’s being pumped out by HMG over the last weekend about only 7 in XX million AZ jabs.
This UK gov documents listed on this page are “interesting”
97958 AZ adverse reactions reported
38776 pfizer adverse reactions reported
go and look at the AZ analysis print…..
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions
Edit: The up-to-date figures now being reported are 19 deaths and 79 cases.
Paper vacc passports won’t work standalone like the old ones. And no security feature will work, because organised crime will crack any security feature, due to the high value of a fake certificate.
I don’t know what is planned (the govt here is saying nothing, waiting for the heat to die down and for the people to push the agenda for travelling) but I am sure one can encode a photo, hash it together with a vacc status flag and an optional vacc expiry date, into a QR code, and print the two together on a piece of paper. That will prevent changing the photo while keeping the QR code.
With an app it works better, but an app could be hacked the same way, hence the need for a secure hash.
To verify it, scan the pic and the QR code and match the hash. No need for an online database. The system works offline.
It will probably work for a particular photo of the person, not any photo of the person which is what phone locking needs to be able to handle and that is a lot harder.
The clot rates are still just at the ppm level. Sure one can make a case for not vaccing children but that will enable mutations to evolve in that part of the population.
The US government will not introduce vaccine passports. Here a report from UK Pravda 
If the EU or UK were looking for a world government vaccine passport agreement (their usual default position) or for Americans to have such a thing to enter, they aren’t going to get it.
Silvaire wrote:
The US government will not introduce vaccine passports.
No, it won’t (there’s prob90 no legal basis for it anyway). Businesses however, will.
Silvaire wrote:
or for Americans to have such a thing to enter, they aren’t going to get it.
Well, then you just stay outside. Much as today if you want to travel to countries that demand a Yellow Fever vaccination. Your loss.
In terms of international travel the threat will remain of variants. It will take a long time for some countries to get anwhere near a significant percentage of their population vaccinated.
It will prove a challenge because I still feel there is doubt whether a variant is possible that would be vaccine immune. I sense time will provide a better indication. Even with testing, the worry is (or perhaps should be) a variant could establish itself in the population very quickly and equally quickly there would be a big problem. It is all very well saying the vaccine could be adapted quickly, but we have seen what this effort has taken and how quickly the virus is capable of spreading. Second time around it will be quicker, but not exactly over night.
I am optomistic the virus has had a reasonable amount of time to test out most of the viable options and so far there isnt one that is fundamentally different (that is not to say not different), but over the next six months the virus will encounter the onslaught of hopefully being stifled with the vaccine and I guess will come under the greatest challenge so far to evolve resistant variants.
A nasal innoculation would be a significant game changer simply because of speed of delivery – lets hope it can be developed and equally as effective as a vaccine.
