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Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

reuters.com

231–240 of 712 posts

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#231
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a virus with bad long-term effects on the body. Not a good idea to catch it just to get immune.

Nobody knows its long term effect on the body. Especially if you were asymptomatic.

Put another way: Nobody knows of any long term effect on the body.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#232
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the vaccine was going to be free anyway?

Someone is going to pay. It may not be you at the point of the needle, but somebody will. Governments will pay a lot to get their economies going again. That burden will in turn fall on taxpayers one way or another; whether it's directly via taxes or budget cuts or indirectly via inflation or debt service.

Yes, I realize that. My comment was in response to the criticism of these companies being funded by tax dollars while being granted a patent. The implication being that we're paying (as taxpayers) but getting nothing in return since we would have to pay for the vaccine anyway.

My response is that we're getting the vaccine for free in return.

That said, I'm not sure that it's actually going to be free. That's just what I heard. I should point that out - I don't want to propagate bad info.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad to say, given how testing, lockdown, etc. has proceeded, I'm losing confidence that most western governments are capable of any "logistical efforts for the history books" at this point. I heard a lot of bluster about testing here in Ontario in the spring, but here we are in the fall with rationing of tests again.

Testing in Waterloo Region was really good over the summer— minimal wait times, multiple drive-in sites, results turned around in 24-36hrs. I think they just failed to account for the bump that would come from school starting and people wanting to get tested in advance of Thanksgiving. I think the "military involved" piece is key, especially if you're talking about the US. It's maybe a bit trite at this point, but a…

I guess that's the thing; the gov't is the one who made the decision to bring kids back fulltime, how incompetent do you have to be to not know there'd be a bump in testing demands?

Re: Waterloo region, I work at Google Waterloo, so although I don't live in KW (I'm in rural Flamborough) most of my coworkers do. I had one who showed up at 7am to get a test, lineups were around several blocks and they shut the whole thing down because people were getting rude. He then had to wait a bit and drive to Guelph. People were driving out from Toronto to London, Woodstock, etc. to get tests.

In our industry if we provisioned data centres or server instances like this, we'd be in a bit of trouble, no?

EDIT: FWIW I have a political leaning and bias towards a strong public sector and am a big believer in public service. I'm not one of those "government can't do anything right" and "less government is better" types. But I do think that several decades of "government can't do anything right" people being a dominant cultural and political force now means that government can no longer do anything right. We're losing our ability to act collectively :-(

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#237
post #221

Good news but still a long way to go. How's it going to be rolled out? Here in the UK we have tried and failed to get a regular flu jab (our GPs have run out of a very small supply and the pharmacies don't have any to sell) and I'm not optimistic about our chances of getting this next year or whenever it arrives.

Can I check: are you in the priority group for flu jabs? Because GPs (in England, I don't know about the other nations) should have enough stock. They are prioritising higher need first, and then the expanded programme later in the year, and then anyone else who wants one after that. If you're not priority need you can try a pharmacist.

According to my GP they had a batch for the over 65s but they ran out pretty quickly. I usually get free flu jabs due to asthma but although it's strongly recommended I'm not aware of it being a definite priority group.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#238
post #116

Good news for US BigPharma Merck holding the Oxford patents, while public funding has paid for its research: https://archive.is/aGUJd

Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. Oxford develops the vaccine with public money. We also, god willing, need to manufacture billions of them and transport them around the globe. For that manufacturing, give me a solid existing multinational with a proven manufacturing record and base please, not some non-profit startup.

As a US taxpayer, I care. Why am I paying twice for the same product, that makes the outcome worse for everyone on average.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#239

The good ol' Oxford Jab

Very awkward use of informal english in this article's title, particularly from Reuters.

The word jab is standard UK English for 'shot'. It might be slightly informal, but it's definitely standard to see it in the news and in government publications.

Example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54337585

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#240
post #222

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the vaccine that killed a test subject? https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/volunteer-astraze...

A person who got the vaccine died; "vaccine killed a test subject" is quite misleading.

Unfortunately that's how most newspapers released the news, so I'm not surprised he's confused
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