Coronavirus Thread (Off Topic, Politics) (278 Viewers)

Think it’s fairly simple. EU were massively naive when they signed contracts and didn’t put the levels of protection U.K. and US did for vaccines produced there. Now they’re exporting all over the world while us and the US keep the vaccines we produce (as we made clear we would when we signed up).

Once they realised what they’d done and that AZ wouldn’t be able to supply what they thought they went of a political offensive about AZ forgetting the massive damage it will do to vaccine uptake generally.

Lots of selfishness and stupidity all round, but really anyone who couldn’t see this coming (like the EU didn’t) only has themselves to blame.

Their threats won’t go anywhere. They stop exports of vaccine we stop exports of components and were all back to square one. They’re going to have to suck it up and explain to voters that they fucked up. Good luck hearing that from a politician.

Evo1883 said:

I mean we all know Boris failed during the pandemic...
But to me this is no better, its potentially causing unecessary deaths over the continent

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I totally agree. Though 'Macron is as bad' shouldn't be an excuse to let him off the hook.

Kussenbergs defence of the government on Marr yesterday was pathetic.
I hope the French media don't toady around Macron in the same way and hold him to account.

RedSalmon said:

Am not one for conspiracy theories, but I cannot help but wonder if the way certain European Governments have behaved over the various vaccines (and continue to do so) and the way in which they have tried to hinder the roll out in the UK, is there a concern amongst those same Governments that it will give the UK economy a head start as things start to normalise?

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Would not be the least surprised. And if we can't go abroad hopefully the money gets spent here giving uk tourism and hospitality a shot in the arm (forgive the pun)

Would this not be a fourth wave for us? Or were Christmas and autumn surges rolled into one?

Norway has been one of the most successful countries in Europe in the fight against Covid-19, with only Iceland experiencing fewer deaths relative to the size of its population.
So when, after vaccinating 120,000 of its 5.3m people with the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, Norway found six cases of severe blood clots in recipients that led to the death of four people, the number stood out.
“It is quite remarkable. For the young nurses, young doctors who have been vaccinated, it is not good news for them. The sentiment in Norway because of this is a little special,” Steinar Madsen, medical director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, told the Financial Times.



Nordic nations hold off on AstraZeneca jab as scientists probe safety concerns

Norway, Denmark and Sweden stand apart from the use of the AstraZeneca jab after at least 16 countries last week temporarily suspended or limited its use over concerns number of recipients. On Thursday, the European Medicines Agency declared the vaccine safe after its own probe found no link, and inoculation resumed in Germany, Italy, Spain and other countries, with France limiting its use to the over-55s.
The three Scandinavian nations say they will decide this week whether to restart their programmes. Late on Sunday evening, Norwegian authorities announced two further deaths — taking the total to four — of people suffering from an unusual set of symptoms: severe blood clots.

We have only had about 650 deaths so far . . . If we had been in a precarious situation like in the UK, the attitude of the Norwegian population would have been different
Steinar Madsen, medical director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency

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The cases that sparked the concerns involve an unusual set of symptoms: severe blood clots alongside low levels of blood platelets and bleeding. Madsen said Norwegian experts had “never seen anything quite like this before”.
Norway dissented from the EMA decision because it wants the symptoms listed as a possible side effect. An investigation at Oslo University Hospital — where three of the Norwegians with the symptoms were hospitalised and one died — found it was highly likely there was a connection with the vaccine.
Since the safety concerns were first raised, the EMA and World Health Organization have continued to recommend use of the vaccine, saying the benefits outweighed the risks. On Thursday, the regulator said that out of 20m people who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe, including the UK, it had received and reviewed 25 reports of clots associated with low levels of blood platelets.
Madsen said Norway agreed with the EMA that for the population as a whole, the AstraZeneca vaccine had a “positive risk-benefit ratio”. However, he said, there were “some very severe cases” and the difficulty lay in balancing the various factors.
“We are in a very lucky position. We have only had about 650 deaths so far. We are in a totally different situation to the UK, Italy, Germany, France, Czechia. If we had been in a precarious situation like in the UK, the attitude of the Norwegian population would have been different,” he said.
Experts on immunity and infection say it is plausible that a heightened inflammatory response to vaccination could in extremely rare cases lead to serious and even fatal blood disorders, such as those observed in Europe. No direct link to the AstraZeneca vaccine has been proved and the mechanism of such a severe reaction is unknown.
Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, pointed out that Covid-19 itself causes serious clotting disorders so it was possible that the virus’s spike protein, produced by the body after vaccination, might provoke a similar response in a small number of recipients. Alternatively, another component of the vaccine, such as the adenovirus vector used in the AstraZeneca jab, might induce an excessive immune reaction, he said. However, he stressed that such explanations were speculative.
Sten Vermund, the dean of Yale School of Public Health, also said the spike protein could explain any autoimmune reaction, noting both Norwegian and German scientists were independently postulating the same cause.
Stephan Lewandowsky, chair in cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol in the UK, argued that the small number of events found in smaller countries with a low number of vaccinations could be skewing the picture.
“Randomness is ‘lumpy’ and if you look at many smaller countries then you may find a clustering of cases in one or the other country by chance alone, even though there is no signal in the overall data,” he warned. “That’s why agencies like the EMA that look at all available data have the best information to make a decision about safety.”
But there are examples with vaccines for other diseases where the risk-benefit ratio has led to a pause. In the US, Vermund said, the swine flu vaccine of 1976 was associated with a complex neurological condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome. “It was rare but serious and since the 1976 pandemic influenza did not manifest as feared, vaccination was stopped altogether,” he said. “The cost was not worth the benefit in that case.”

A series of narcolepsy cases in Scandinavia after administration of the Pandemrix flu vaccine may have “sensitised” those countries to adverse vaccine events, said Peter English, a retired Public Health England consultant in communicable disease control.
“The number of cases of this rare condition was so small that it is not possible to be certain that the vaccine was the cause, but the current consensus seems to be that it likely was,” he said.
Madsen said another issue in Norway, a society known for high levels of mutual trust and openness, was that it was important for the authorities to be as transparent as possible. “The worst thing that could happen is that the population could think something is being hidden from them,” he added.
Penelope Ward, a professor of pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London, said countries were free to make their own decisions and were “answerable to their populations” for them.
But, she warned: “That will include the continued risk of Covid infection and associated deaths, which both remain significantly more common in the Nordic region than the very rare risk of complex thrombotic or bleeding disorders reported following receipt of the vaccin

Aw.knickers.ft the ft with a load of script .

SBT said:

Illegal Marseille street party causes anger - France 24

Illegal Marseille street party causes anger

www.france24.com

Miami Beach, Overwhelmed by Spring Break, Extends Emergency Curfew (Published 2021)

The city has been criticized for its enforcement of the curfew in South Beach over the weekend, when the police used pepper balls to try to disperse crowds.

www.nytimes.com

I have the feeling that this summer is going to be an absolute shitshow. Not sure if a big bang reopening is going to be this joyous, happy clappy thing that everyone is envisaging.

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I think this is where the vaccines could make it different to before. I think staggered reopening and the keeping of small inconveniences like facemasks indoors etc for a while is sensible, but the vaccine should hopefully prevent the numbers of serious cases and deaths reaching the proportions they did before when we opened up.

Still unclear as to what the effect may be long term, as the jab makes you asymptomatic rather than immune but hopefully it won't lead to things like serious scarring of the lungs etc that I think will prove a problem for the next decade or more in terms of long term health.

Sky_Blue_Dreamer said:

I think this is where the vaccines could make it different to before. I think staggered reopening and the keeping of small inconveniences like facemasks indoors etc for a while is sensible, but the vaccine should hopefully prevent the numbers of serious cases and deaths reaching the proportions they did before when we opened up.

Still unclear as to what the effect may be long term, as the jab makes you asymptomatic rather than immune but hopefully it won't lead to things like serious scarring of the lungs etc that I think will prove a problem for the next decade or more in terms of long term health.

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It's not cases I'm worrying about, it's people who've forgotten what a night out feels like acting like dicks.

SBT said:

It's not cases I'm worrying about, it's people who've forgotten what a night out feels like acting like dicks.

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Good point. Bet the NHS are dreading the carnage they face if all restrictions are relaxed in one go.

Anyone know where is the best place to find stats on excess death comparisons by nation?

I appreciate that not all the data for 2020 will be have been collated & published yet, but someone must have made some preliminary comparisons.

I only ask as I was reading about Russias figures recently & whilst their official covid death figures are <100K, their current excess deaths figure is in excess of 300K for the same period!!

I'm guessing a lot more countries covid figures are similarly under-reported by massive numbers, so it would be interesting to see a comparison.....

....and I wonder if we'll ever discover the true death toll from China?

17 UK deaths today...

a 5% increase in positives today. But we tested 30% more than last week to find them

jimmyhillsfanclub said:

Anyone know where is the best place to find stats on excess death comparisons by nation?

I appreciate that not all the data for 2020 will be have been collated & published yet, but someone must have made some preliminary comparisons.

I only ask as I was reading about Russias figures recently & whilst their official covid death figures are <100K, their current excess deaths figure is in excess of 300K for the same period!!

I'm guessing a lot more countries covid figures are similarly under-reported by massive numbers, so it would be interesting to see a comparison.....

....and I wonder if we'll ever discover the true death toll from China?

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This may help



And we'll never know the true death toll from Wuhan let alone the whole country

RedSalmon said:

Am not one for conspiracy theories, but I cannot help but wonder if the way certain European Governments have behaved over the various vaccines (and continue to do so) and the way in which they have tried to hinder the roll out in the UK, is there a concern amongst those same Governments that it will give the UK economy a head start as things start to normalise?

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The UK and EU are not competing economies. It is in our interests that the EU economy is strong and vice versa.

jimmyhillsfanclub said:

Anyone know where is the best place to find stats on excess death comparisons by nation?

I appreciate that not all the data for 2020 will be have been collated & published yet, but someone must have made some preliminary comparisons.

I only ask as I was reading about Russias figures recently & whilst their official covid death figures are <100K, their current excess deaths figure is in excess of 300K for the same period!!

I'm guessing a lot more countries covid figures are similarly under-reported by massive numbers, so it would be interesting to see a comparison.....

....and I wonder if we'll ever discover the true death toll from China?

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I think i've already linked to this article previously but yes, Russian cases are much higher than the official numbers.

Ccfcisparks said:

17 UK deaths today...

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283 admitted to England hospitals
Compared to 1000 a month ago
Compared to 3700 two months ago

I think it's safe to say the NHS has now been protected (certainly until next winter).

I'm still confident we're going to beat this. And be the first Nation at least in Europe to do that.

A far cry from the mainly catastrophic overall response.

Let's get jabbed and get to the fucking pub

Saddlebrains said:

I'm still confident we're going to beat this. And be the first Nation at least in Europe to do that.

A far cry from the mainly catastrophic overall response.

Let's get jabbed and get to the fucking pub

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If the EU don't want the AZ jabs, let's buy them off them. If they want the jabs, tell them to use them before bitching about receiving further still. Why provide vaccines to countries that will let them go to waste over one that will use every last vial?

Maybe this approach by the EU re:vaccinations will lead to its eventual unravelling.

Ian1779 said:

Maybe this approach by the EU re:vaccinations will lead to its eventual unravelling.

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Doubt it as it’s controlled by two powers - it’s always the problem I’ve had with it - a superstate controlled by one superpower and another very happily in tow

Saddlebrains said:

I'm still confident we're going to beat this. And be the first Nation at least in Europe to do that.

A far cry from the mainly catastrophic overall response.

Let's get jabbed and get to the fucking pub

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We will never have "beat it" with our death rate and economic results to date. You can't undo the effects of either. We are sneaking some late consolation goals.

Is it possible that Joe Biden was waiting to see how I got on with my jab before the US gave it the all clear, or is that just coincidence? I'm saying nothing, draw your own conclusions.

ajsccfc said:

Is it possible that Joe Biden was waiting to see how I got on with my jab before the US gave it the all clear, or is that just coincidence? I'm saying nothing, draw your own conclusions.

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It’s about as correlated as blood clots and the AZ vaccine

Everyone cheer up! You’re nearly there.

The data looks amazing and so fucking what if you have to wear a mask to go and get a lucozade and a chomp in Asda for a bit longer and have to not breathe down someone’s neck when you’re queuing up for a steak bake. Best practice in south Asian countries anyway!

robbiekeane said:

Everyone cheer up! You’re nearly there.

The data looks amazing and so fucking what if you have to wear a mask to go and get a lucozade and a chomp in Asda for a bit longer and have to not breathe down someone’s neck when you’re queuing up for a steak bake. Best practice in south Asian countries anyway!

View attachment 19280View attachment 19281View attachment 19282View attachment 19283

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It is good news.

Looking at those trends, you could almost be believed into thinking lockdowns work,,,

Sky_Blue_Dreamer said:

It is good news.

Looking at those trends, you could almost be believed into thinking lockdowns work,,,

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Yeh I'm not sure anyone is really stupid enough to believe that the measures we are having to take don't reduce the spread of this virus. People saying that just don't want to make any sacrifices anymore

112 deaths seems a lot better until you know one of them

Johnnythespider said:

112 deaths seems a lot better until you know one of them

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Yes and a 30 something Coventry mother of three the other day too .

A non story in itself but... could've sworn the Oxford one was being done at cost!

Deleted member 5849 said:

A non story in itself but... could've sworn the Oxford one was being done at cost!

'Greed' and 'capitalism' helped UK's vaccines success, says PM

But Boris Johnson immediately retracts the comments made during a Zoom meeting with Tory MPs.

www.bbc.co.uk

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In the article Johnson "praised AstraZeneca for providing vaccines to the UK at cost"

Deleted member 5849 said:

A non story in itself but... could've sworn the Oxford one was being done at cost!

'Greed' and 'capitalism' helped UK's vaccines success, says PM

But Boris Johnson immediately retracts the comments made during a Zoom meeting with Tory MPs.

www.bbc.co.uk

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yeah, weird comment as that’s my understanding as well. probably more of the story is who leaked it (typical Tories, someone’s probably not happy either because Johnson’s not releasing restrictions quickly enough for them, or not kicking off enough with the EU, so are spoiling for a fight and want to give him a bloody nose)

ovduk78 said:

In the article Johnson "praised AstraZeneca for providing vaccines to the UK at cost"

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Exactly. So wtf is he on about?

(Actually, why am I surprised?!?)

Deleted member 5849 said:

Exactly. So wtf is he on about?

(Actually, why am I surprised?!?)

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Maybe a dig at the EU preferring the Pfizer one & having to pay more for it?

wingy said:

Yes and a 30 something Coventry mother of three the other day too .

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Deleted member 5849 said:

A non story in itself but... could've sworn the Oxford one was being done at cost!

'Greed' and 'capitalism' helped UK's vaccines success, says PM

But Boris Johnson immediately retracts the comments made during a Zoom meeting with Tory MPs.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Johnson: greed is good!
Nurses: can we have a pay rise?
Johnson: not that kind of greed

Sky Blue Pete said:

NHS care worker, 37, dies from Covid leaving behind three children under 12

Mum-of-three Laura Tamne, from Coventry, West Midlands, tragically passed away in hospital on Thursday after contracting the virus a few weeks ago

www.google.co.uk

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I wonder if she'd had the vaccine......she certainly would have been offered it prior to contracting covid?