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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

#141
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do we actually know all the details of who they’ve contracted with? I wouldn’t be surprised if private healthcare providers in the UK already got their place in line.

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

#142
post #61
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state will not provide it to non-residents. As soon as you arrive in the UK, immigration stamps "no recourse to public funds" in black all-caps into your passport as a friendly reminder.

In this specific instance, you're probably right that there will be paperwork. However, in general, acute healthcare in free in the UK and does not even require ID. I don't know if that's how it's "meant" to be, but that's how it is; if you're on vacation in the UK and something bad happens, you can just turn up at the nearest hospital and it will get sorted out, no bill no fuss.

I think doctors have to ask for ID if they suspect someone is not eligible for free treatment. I know this happened for two of my friends and they had to show ID at A&E, but that was during the heat of Brexit campaign, so this could make doctors feel encouraged to do such checks. I have not heard about it for a long time now though.

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

#143
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helps to have no land borders, not saying Australia didn’t do a great job curbing it ..

Does it really? Has it been found that a significant source of infections was illegal immigration? Or that without it there would not have already been internal spreading?

That's what is happening at this moment in Thailand. There were no local transmissions for many months. Borders are closed and anyone coming into the country has to go directly to 14 day quarantine and test clean before they get out. But then some Thais went to Myanmar and snuck back into Chiang Mai in northern Thailand illegally. They were infected and have now spread the infection locally in Thailand to at least a few people. Some cases took flights to Bangkok. There is a frantic effort to track and trace everyone who might have been exposed.

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

#144

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?

The vaccine wasn't tested for reducing spread - it was only tested for preventing symptomatic illness. We don't know yet if vaccinated people exposed to covid can spread it to others even if they don't get sick. Therefore we base our vaccination protocols on something the vaccine is proven to do, not something it might do hypothetically.

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

#145
post #137
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this specific instance, you're probably right that there will be paperwork. However, in general, acute healthcare in free in the UK and does not even require ID. I don't know if that's how it's "meant" to be, but that's how it is; if you're on vacation in the UK and something bad happens, you can just turn up at the nearest hospital and it will get sorted out, no bill no fuss.

Foreign nationals without a visa (and non-resident British people, like me now) do receive a bill. I used to work in the department that recovers the money. The rates are in an excel file linked on this page. Visitors pay 150% of the published rate. https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/national-tariff/

Out of curiosity, what kind of money we are talking about? For example checking up sprained ankle at A&E? Many of my friends being disappointed with NHS go for example to Mexico for private treatment and it works much better that doing it here, plus you can enjoy the climate and great food.

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

#146
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Presumably they pre-sold based on estimates of their production. I would not be very surprised if it turns out they can make 10% more than they committed, and auction this off. And would expect hospitals treating Saudi princelings & the like to win such an auction. But does anyone actually know what these pre-sale contracts look like? They must have some wiggle room in case production doesn't go as well as planned...…

Last I'd heard, they overestimated how much they could produce and presold more than they could actually deliver at least at first.

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

#147
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adjuvants in modern vaccines are extraordinarily well studied and safe. Current side effects include 6-24 hours of feeling totally crappy. Still beats Covid-19...

How modern is "modern" here? Because the whole Pandermix saga happened only a decade ago and some are pointing towards the combination of the adjuvant and antigen: https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3948/rr-22 Considering that this doesn't seem to be a settled question, I'm not so sure that it makes sense to blindly trust that everything will be alright in the current, rushed, case.

The whole Pandermix risk is much smaller than the risks in the current pandemics. Narcolepsy is very rare disease and even increased risk due to that vaccine remains very low as absolute value and it only appears high if it's expressed as a relative number.

In establishing the shorter-term safety nothing was "rushed" now compared to the processes performed before (it was tested on tens of thousands of people). Regarding the longer-term safety, who would be willing to wait e.g. two more years before any vaccine could be used?

As the vaccination will be voluntary for common people, as long at there are shortages, those who don't want to get it should indeed leave it to those who will.

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

#149
post #90
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…

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/370/6520/1022.ful... 'Public needs to prep for vaccine side effects, “Take Tylenol and suck it up,” says one researcher. Fever, aches show vaccine works'.

Seeing this post reminded me that when I had the 'flu vaccine a little while back, the Pharmacist advised avoiding Paracetamol (Tylenol?) afterwards in case it reduced the efficacy of the vaccine. A bit of quick Googling turned up study results from a while back suggesting this in relation to childhood vaccines. Just wondering if anyone here with experience in the field has a opinion on whether painkillers like these are best avoided for a short time afterwards.

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccine is not available privately in the UK. If you're not registered with the NHS, you're probably not going to be able to get vaccinated in the UK anytime soon. Even if you are registered, you will probably have to wait til late spring if you're under 50 with no underlying health issues.

This. The idea that people are planning 'vaccine holidays' is bizarre.

I'm sure people are planning one. That doesn't mean they will be successful. Most of the people with enough money to do this are alert for scams (though they might decide it is 80% chance of scam and decide to risk it anyway), so they will be looking to see if they will get the vaccine in the end, and if they don't think you will deliver they won't go. I would expect anyone who gets a "black market" vaccine gets one of the not approved (yet) vaccines. That supply is sitting around and probably not tracked as much. Break into a warehouse (often with insider help, possibly at high levels such that most people in the company help you because your alibi checks out), get a supply, then send it to your black market buddies. Pfizer has a legal market now and will do everything to ship to that market. Moderna is close enough that they won't risk it. The Oxford vaccine has a lot of companies who can make it and an uncertain future (60% effective when there is a 95%?) so it is the most likely candidate, for this. Russia also is making a vaccine that they might be willing to sell like this. China might as well, but I find it unlikely as they have other markets. Of course this whole paragraph is pure speculation: anything is possible.
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