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First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK

bbc.com

201–210 of 404 posts

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

#201
post #14

Good luck to the average person getting it in the USA before March. Even with half the population refusing it because the anti-vax people might be even more crazy than the anti-maskers. Which makes you wonder which country will have covid longest.

Can someone explain why it’s not enough to just vaccinate people who want to get vaccinated? Doesn’t that cover everyone who wants to avoid covid19?

Theoretically if we return to "life as normal" once the vaccine has been distributed to everyone who wants it, but a significant portion of high risk individuals do not get vaccinated, it could overwhelm our hospitals.

That said, I think the fears about many people refusing the vaccine are completely overblown. All of the folks who I've talked to who are concerned about the vaccine have expressed willingness to get it after it has been out for a few months without major side effects. They wont qualify to be first in line anyways, so they'll have to wait regardless.

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

#202

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?

You are not looking at the whole picture here. The uk is vaccinating according to risk of death, and risk of occupying a hospital bed first . Not the risk of catching or passing it. THe big concern in this pandemic has been hospital usage. once your hospital is full everyone starts dying not just covid patients. We were about two/four weeks away from collapse in london in april.

As a standard, the UK makes medical decisions based on QALYs saved (quality-adjusted life years).

Although you can argue that keeping hospital beds free saves a lot of QALYs, it's harder to argue that care homes have a lot of QALYs to save.

And, it's not obvious that care home patients are the first to occupy hospital beds (I'm unsure about it); care home patients with COVID have tended to die in their care home.

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

#203
post #14

Good luck to the average person getting it in the USA before March. Even with half the population refusing it because the anti-vax people might be even more crazy than the anti-maskers. Which makes you wonder which country will have covid longest.

The US vaccination plan has vaccinating non-essential (read average) people starting at around May-June, so no way it happens in March. Doctors, the elderly and other more at risk groups will get it before that.

The plans are expect to change as/if other vaccines become available. If the other vaccines in the pipeline get approved on the expected best case schedule we will be vaccinating anyone who wants it starting march. If there are unexpected issues things could take longer (the UK could still discover something and withdraw Pfizers' approval as a worst case)

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

#204

> First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK *after getting approval from regulators Tens of thousands already received the vaccine during trials. This marks the official rollout with general public availability (pending supply issues), so that's cool. It's just weird that the article refers to this dose in particular as a "historic event".

anything for attention am i rite?

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

#205

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?

yeah but how do you find those people without a massive civil rights violation?

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

#206
post #165

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?

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a small political motivation here too - the gov were heavily criticized for their terrible handling of covid in care homes, with an older voter base they might want to be seen to be doing right by the care homes this time around

Nonsense. Every country I've heard about is prioritizing nursing home residents, and few of them received the level of criticism that the UK did regarding nursing home residents.

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

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good chance that there is significant overlap between anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.

...

Most people working without air conditioning are in a job where they should have a mask that is a lot more uncomfortable than a simple N95! There are a lot of chemicals that a N95 won't filter and those are typically used by the types of people who don't have air conditioning.

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

#208
post #116
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a tendency to highlight risks and sideeffects of this vaccine that is without any basis. It's reasonable to ask what the risks are, but unspecific ramblings about risks aren't helpful and it's unreasonable to highlight very hypothetical risks compared to the very real risks of getting Covid-19. Right now the risk issue seems pretty clearcut: There were no serious sideeffects in the trials. What gave me additi…

> It seems almost impossible that the vaccines pose a greater risk than the risk of not using them. How about to a baby, or an unborn baby? The relative risk is almost certainly higher to a baby, but how high? We don't know, since there haven't been any longitudinal studies (for starters.) Which is why it would be unethical outside a clinical trial to administer it to younger people en masse. Eventually the relative…

It was less than a year before people started reporting it, and it took less than 2 years before a study was released by the Swedish health agency warning of increased narcolepsy risk in Children--not 4.

Also the increased rate of narcolepsy was 0.005%. That's why it took several months before anyone noticed it.

Additionally the flu itself can cause the same kind of narcolepsy, which means that this vaccine was worse than other vaccines, but still potentially better than no vaccine at all.

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

#209
post #78

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…

> 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…

> 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.

Exactly. I have occasionally runny nose combined with sporadic sneezes and coughs pretty much every winter. If someone like my had so "mild" COVID symptoms they would consider themselves asymptomatic (paucisymptomatic?), and rightfully so. (My actual COVID symptoms were not as mild, but not very serious either.)

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

#210

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 person administering the vaccine while not wearing gloves for instance?
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