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First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

bbc.com

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Re: First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

#101
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pfizer vaccine won't be available privately in UK, not for a long time. So I think they will be disappointed.

What stops pfizer from selling directly to customers?

Probably the billions that governments have paid for their place in the queue

Re: First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

#102

A 90 year old woman in a nursing home is not spreading COVID. Wouldn't it make more sense to give this to people who are most at risk of spreading it, not dying from it? Why wouldn't we go at the root cause of the pandemic; young healthy asymptomatic spreaders?

Vaccination also prevents catching it, which prevents dying from it, which this age group is much at risk at even without prior complications.

There is a heck of a lot more people who are at risk of being superspreaders, not even mentioning the huge number of middle aged people going to protests against a diseases existence. You won't get those people vaccinated. They will massively contribute to the spread.

Additionally, vaccinating risk groups in the high age category first lets you spot complications with the disease more early and it's ethically somewhat better to risk long-term vaccination issues with 90+ year olds than 20+ year olds, as one of these groups will have to suffer the consequences for a shorter time. It may sound harsh to make comparisons like that but you'll have to make decisions like that in a medical environment.

Re: First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

#103
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are either paucisymptomatic (you have mild symptoms - maybe too mild to notice) Or you notice them but because they also match symptoms of colds and allergies, and you’ve been getting them on and off for months, you assume they aren’t COVID. I don’t think there has been an interval longer than a week since February during which I didn’t have at least a couple symptoms that could have been COVID. I’ve not had t…

> I don’t think there has been an interval longer than a week since February during which I didn’t have at least a couple symptoms that could have been COVID. It's remarkable the number of people anecdotally reporting similar symptoms - often out of character for otherwise robustly healthy individuals. I'm guessing some sort of psychosomatic response to the year's stresses.

Is it that out of character though?

I have been having the same, but the main reason why I notice it now is that every time I have any symptom, even the mildest of them, I take notice and consider the possibility of Covid, whereas in past years I would forget about them if even notice at all.

For context, I'm a fairly healthy individual who hasn't seen a GP or other medical doctor in at least a couple years, probably longer. Last time I've been to one was because of exercise-related injuries.

Re: First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

#104
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pfizer vaccine won't be available privately in UK, not for a long time. So I think they will be disappointed.

What stops pfizer from selling directly to customers?

Lack of supply. They’ve already pre-sold all they could make to governments.

Re: First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

#105
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not even any plans to offer vaccines privately in the UK yet. The NHS isn't going to offer it to travellers.

Not NHS, but what’s stopping private companies from purchasing from pfizer at 10x markup and selling to willing customers?

They could theoretically try to order it I suppose, but they're going to be at the end of a very long backlog.

Re: First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

#106
post #69

As this rolls out I thought Derek Lowe had a good point to make https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/04/ge... When you vaccinate this many people, you will have those people die, get heart attacks, strokes, cancer, etc. Why? Because that would have happened to them anyways, vaccine or not. So don’t freak out when “issues” start to crop up. Wait until someone has a done a proper analysis to see if th…

Funny that covid deaths are diagnosed the other way around: even if you die WITH covid it's assumed that you died BECAUSE of covid. But when it comes to the vaccine it should be the other way around? So we have to apply common sense to the vaccine related deaths but not to the covid related deaths?

COVID cases are diagnosed this way because Big Pharma needed to induce panic, in order to sell their "vaccines". They probably bribed some WHO officials to push this way of counting on all countries.

Re: First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this comment getting downvoted? seems like a fair question. I've seen this now in several threads where even questioning side effects of the vaccine gets downvoted and looked down upon like they did something illegal. This is not HN I used to know.

There isn't any evidence for serious side-effects from mRNA vaccines. The vaccines have undergone significant testing, and they're not doing anything magical. If you're going to insinuate that the vaccines have significant risks, you should provide some evidence. (This bar should also be a bit higher in my opinion in the middle of a public health emergency.) Compare a statement like "5g has great potential, but I'm r…

I think a lot of people here, me included, are well aware that despite your best intentions and best understanding and application of testing, things can go drastically wrong at or after launch of a new anything. Eventually we learn what the issue is and make sure it doesn't happen again. But if you look at all the tests we have in place, you have to remember that a significant number of them came from discovering stuff in the field rather than before the launch.

This applies to everything from building bridges (University of Miami), through software products (Mars Climate Orbiter) to designing new medicines (thalidomide / paroxetine).

Arrogance that something is 100% safe is only ignorance. The point is we'd like to understand what the known risks are and the mechanisms are. Some of us would like to see a few hundred-thousand cars go over that new wobbly cantilever bridge design.

This is different from complete ignorance and denial which is a separate issue.

Re: First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

#108
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pfizer vaccine won't be available privately in UK, not for a long time. So I think they will be disappointed.

What stops pfizer from selling directly to customers?

As someone who works in medical devices, there's huge sections of standards referring to confirming that software and devices reach the intended user untampered and analysing the risk of selling to an untrained customers and things like that.

The long and the short of it always boils down to, it's not worth the risk to sell to individuals. Because if something goes wrong and someone is injured or killed, the regulatory agencies are going to come down on you like a ton of bricks

I would assume similar practices exist for pharmaceuticals.

Re: First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is missing the point and reeks of intellectual dishonesty. Asymptomatic has a strict definition. You get the virus and nothing happens to you. This is what the WHO and Fauci are referring to. But most "asymptomatic" cases aren't. They are either paucisymptomatic (you have mild symptoms - maybe too mild to notice) or pre-symptomatic. Obviously if people were only contagious if showing symptoms, the pandemic would…

I made a new point, so am I missing my own point? Confused. > Obviously if people were only contagious if showing symptoms, the pandemic wouldn't be. I don't think that is obviously the case at all. It would have to be proved. The dominant vectors of contagion are not yet well understood - we could be dealing with very highly infectious airborne virus, that is capable of spreading widely from a relatively small numbe…

> we could be dealing with very highly infectious airborne virus, that is capable of spreading widely from a relatively small number of symptomatic and pre-symptomatic super spreaders.

The calculated R0 does not support this theory. Measles works this way. R0 for Measles is > 10

> that current public health interventions orientate around isolating individuals whether they are symptomatic, asymptomatic or paucisymptomatic

Everywhere, the restrictions are higher if you were tested and/or is suspected of having Covid. Of course a lot of people DNGAF about the restrictions, which is part of the problem.

Again, if your theory that people showing no symptoms do not transmit the disease then it should be super easy to go around and start finding people spreading it. But it isn.t

Re: First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

#110
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vaccination doesn't mean you cannot get the virus and spread it around. it protects you from the effects of Covid-19, the disease, caused by your body's reaction to the virus. Those vaccinated, because they have less symptoms, less coughing basically, might not spread it around as much, but we don't know that yet. Remember asymptomatic spreading is a big concern for this virus.

This is getting downvotes, but it is at least somewhat correct. > it protects you from the effects of Covid-19, the disease, caused by your body's reaction to the virus. There isn't really evidence either way for this. To quote Nature[1]: "Tests on more than 43,000 people have shown that the Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective at preventing disease" > vaccination doesn't mean you cannot get the virus and spread it around…

How can the vaccine prevent entry of the virus in cells, yet the virus can still replicate? I can’t understand why they state we don’t know, because of how I image viruses and vaccination works. Can someone help me understand this paradox?
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