Peter wrote:
I am not sure anybody spotted the bit in my last post above… the (extremely rare) blood clot risk might be due to different injection methods in different countries. Some vaccines don’t like being injected into blood vessels, but all of them (CV19 ones) need to go into muscle.
Yes, he did a very similar video on the topic two weeks ago, when Denmark suggested this as a possible issue. I posted a link to the video here
EuroGA Link
Denmark has subsequently gone on to abandon using the AZ vaccine altogether now. (Interesting how in the media (at least here) it’s become the AZ vaccine now and no longer the Oxford vaccine.)
Yes; in Germany they prefer to call it “Biontech” because that is the German company, whereas Pfizer is American. Won’t be Biontech for long; as posted here a few weeks back, Pfizer is about to ditch the Biontech co-operation.
In the UK media they use “Oxford” or “AstraZeneca” or both together; I don’t think anybody cares about “Oxford” being better because it is British; Brits don’t believe in buying British and I think too many are still reminded of the pinnacle of British engineering genius, second only to Concorde, known as the Vauxhall Viva, 50 years on 
What drives this scene is 99% politics, because all the vaccines have side effects, at an extremely low level; just different ones. Denmark has presumably calculated it can get enough Pfizer, or even Moderna, and no politician pushes a public perception rock uphill.
Any normal “nurse” type person will know about “aspirating” when injecting. And they probably should do it – with any vaccine.
Peter wrote:
Yes; in Germany they prefer to call it “Biontech” because that is the German company, whereas Pfizer is American. Won’t be Biontech for long; as posted here a few weeks back, Pfizer is about to ditch the Biontech co-operation.
Well, BioNTech is the company which fully invented and developed the vaccine, Pfizer was mainly taken on board to help with the large-scale production. As far as is public perception goes, they contributed next to nothing intellectually. I’m not sure how true that is, but some Germans do indeed take pride that the first working vaccine against Covid-19 (and the first working PCR test) were both invented here…and are all the more angry at the government for squandering this “head start”.
Maybe BioNTech should have partnered with Bayer to keep this a purely German operation, but then again Bayer might not be big in vaccines.
Peter wrote:
So working on the assumption (not reliable) that if one of us got it, we would have both got it,
This just doesn’t seem to be the case. I have family in Europe and out of 6 people 3 got it. While they don’t live together, they are very close and two of them care for a 95-year old who did become infected but miraculously pulled through and is back to normal. The infection trajectories of Covid really seem to be very, very strange.
Maybe BioNTech should have partnered with Bayer to keep this a purely German operation, but then again Bayer might not be big in vaccines.
I am sure that will be the route taken next time; probably very soon… keeping the whole thing in-house (plus brexit) turned out to be the entire reason for UK’s vaccine success, and that point will have been well noted by everybody, worldwide.
This just doesn’t seem to be the case.
Yes; I know. I might, just for interest, do that antibody test.
The Pfizer collaboration was for clinical development, not just production.
BioNTech and Pfizer are both customers of ours. The big vaccine trial was a 100% Pfizer project, nothing to do with BioNTech.
What happens in future will depend on the the IP situation.
Regardless of who BioNTech had chosen to collaborate with, the ability to leverage a particular advantage for Germany would have been limited by intra-EU politics. The German state could in theory have placed an individual order with Pfizer, approved it earlier and started earlier like the UK did…. but didn’t because of the EU position. I’m not sure how collaboration with e.g. Bayer would have altered that.
Emir wrote:
So… what to do if you have to travel on certain date with negative PCR test and you count on it (no symptoms, vaccinated) and then it turns out to be positive?
This is actually quite worrying. I’m getting my second shot (Moderna) in a few hours but need to travel to Europe in two weeks and AFAIK require a negative PCR test. While I will of course have the CDC vaccination card, I somewhat doubt the Europeans accept that. Might be an interesting trip….
I think any scenario like this needs one to keep away from people as much as possible… which we do on holidays anyway (self catering, renting a car, etc). But for the travelling masses it won’t work, as soon as horror stories of people (who got a mysteriously positive test) trapped abroad in solitary confinement hotels hit the daily rags.
the ability to leverage a particular advantage for Germany would have been limited by intra-EU politics.
Yes; very much so. But having it in-house does dramatically improve your position regardless of your community obligations 
Countries have no friends, only potentially overlapping interests, and being in the EU doesn’t fundamentally change this if something big enough is happening.
Peter wrote:
I think any scenario like this needs one to keep away from people as much as possible… which we do on holidays anyway (self catering, renting a car, etc). But for the travelling masses it won’t work, as soon as horror stories of people (who got a mysteriously positive test) trapped abroad in solitary confinement hotels hit the daily rags.
Let’s say your abroad and about to return home, so you go for a COVID test. Let’s say the test results is positive. Presumably you’re told to self-isolate.
Now imagine your aircraft is parked at an uncontrolled aerodrome. You go to your aircraft and take off, fly back home and isolate at home (or a state facility if that’s required by your home country).
What is anyone going to do? Presumably the foreign country is happy to be rid of you. The home country presumably can’t do anymore than insist you quarantine, but at least you’d be doing that on “home soil”.
Would you have actually broken any laws? Or just guidelines for carriers? Not that I’m suggesting anyone do that! I’m just curious if the rules involved are laws or working agreements with carriers.
That should work fine, but it would work only if the departure airport is not checking that test on behalf of your home country.
I don’t know if they will be; after all it is not their problem. But who knows?
If they are checking, you won’t be able to depart from Mali Losinj or Brac or actually most others I can think of (fenced off, 100% police, and anyway the UK is non EU now so you would have to file for say LFAT and then divert). You could depart from La Rochelle (pilot gate with the key code) and some others, but not many in the context of UK pilots needing customs and immigration. From say Losinj you might have to file for Pula and then divert to somewhere “for a refuel” (say Portoroz) and file a fresh FP from there to home.
Something to think about…
