Chris Whitty moves to head off GPs' rebellion over vaccine doses

Boris has apparently said that measures may need to be tougher.

That seems to be the way these announcements are made, so I expect that's where we're headed.

no, something is very fishy/amiss here. If millions of the Oxford vaccine will soon be available- then the Pfizer vaccine should be given as per scientific instructions- then the Oxford given asap to as many as poss.

You just don't mess around with vaccines, you just don't.

Which is why giving more people the first vaccine to give them some protection from the worst of Covid makes sense.

lemon ''It will be a cold day in Hell before I swallow any GNers ( or any social media forum) musings whole on a subject as important as this one. ''

and then accuse us that our concerns re not following researchers/producers' instructions re second shot and mixing, is politically motivated, and UK bashing.

You really take the biscuit. This is not a kindergarten, people are dying.

Nexumi65 - everything you say is what I have concerns about - I also guess that the longer a virus is circulating the more opportunities it has to mutate. None of this is great - if we’d locked down for longer number viris would have been lower - but another mutation might have come in from somewhere else - it’s all bad news really and no one ( apart from New Zealand!) seems to have got this right. Who CAN we trust - no-one has a clue! Also - what gives Tony Blair the right to say one dose is a good plan? We’re all amateur epidemiologists now !

I think this is being done for all the reasons people were worried about weeks ago.

Not enough vaccine doses, logistical problems with the low temperature storage, a mess up with regard to who will be "done" first, and the rise in covid cases.

Lemongrove - do you understand why increasing the gap to 12 weeks increases the risk of vaccine resistant strains developing?

It has nothing to do with politics. We’re in the middle of a pandemic and controlling it must be non political. I find it insulting to be accused of putting my political beliefs before people’s lives and safety.

lemongrove

I think this whole thread has more to do with politics/Brexit and general UK bashing than real concern ( from some quarters.)

Maybee Van Tamm felt that putting a mask on and carrying on much as normal wouldn’t do a great job of combatting the virus ( they are often unwashed/ fiddled about with).
As part of a hygiene and cautious ‘routine’ and kept very clean, then they help somewhat.

On 3 April JVT at the daily briefing said there was no hard evidence to say that mask wearing was beneficial and that Asian countries did it as it was ‘wired into their culture’. I can’t do a link. Maybe someone else can. He made no reference to people fiddling with the masks. Just said they didn’t work. Think he referred to WHO guidelines about it but I need to rewatch it to confirm that.

I think that the approach they're taking is like using a pair of tights as a fan belt - will work for a bit in a desperate situation but not actually dealing with the problem properly.

I think this whole thread has more to do with politics/Brexit and general UK bashing than real concern ( from some quarters.)

Maybee Van Tamm felt that putting a mask on and carrying on much as normal wouldn’t do a great job of combatting the virus ( they are often unwashed/ fiddled about with).
As part of a hygiene and cautious ‘routine’ and kept very clean, then they help somewhat.

To lemon

But you have accepted that the vaccines will be mixed. Just give some thought to it and you will see that it is exactly what you are supporting.

Scientist on BBC at the moment talking about the risk resistance & also the real need to suppress transmission eg via lockdowns because vaccination will take a while.

I see Professor Van Tamm has come out in favour of spacing the vaccinations to give protection to more people. Good enough for me.

France is way behind with vaccinations less than 500 people so far.

Much as I probably trust JVT more than most of them he did say,at the start of the pandemic, that masks were ineffectual. So even with someone like that I don’t trust everything he says. There’s something fishy going on here. And, if it looks like a fish and smells like a fish it’s probably a fish (or something like that...)

MaizieD

^It's a little worrying to think that PHE England wouldn't meet lemongrove's definition of scientists or people who know what they're talking about.^

She'd believe it if cuddly Boris said it...

Anti-intellectualism is scaring...

MaizieD pretending that I hold Johnson in high regard is getting tedious, particularly as I have said from the outset (easy to look up on here!) that I considered him a bad choice,
Not to mention writing many spoof Johnson posts as amusement.
Neither have I said anything at all about PHE and mixing vaccines..
So that’s your post shot down in flames.??

Nezumi65

I wouldn’t say there was a majority scientific opinion that this is a grand idea outside government circles. Certainly isn’t within the international viral evolution research community (although some variation in opinion as to just how reckless this is).

There is plenty of variation in opinions of scientists/ virologists on many things to do with Covid, mainly because it’s so new.The ‘scientific’ pure view of handling the whole crisis would have been to shut the whole country down for a year...or more.Sadly we can’t always do the medically correct thing as the economy would sink and human beings go mad.
The same with the inoculations.....it makes more sense to get the old and the vulnerable a good measure of protection and to vaccinate more.

So if there aren't any supply problems with the Oxford/AZ vaccination, why the hurry to use the BioNTech/Pfizer one, which will result in 100s of thousands people only having "partial" protection?

It's a little worrying to think that PHE England wouldn't meet lemongrove's definition of scientists or people who know what they're talking about.

She'd believe it if cuddly Boris said it...

Anti-intellectualism is scaring...

growstuff I have never mentioned anything at all about mixing or not mixing the vaccines.

Whitewavemark2

lemongrove

That was from the BBC news website Whitewave.....so blame them.

But you alway check your sources, I believe that you advised me to do that a couple of posts ago?

The BBC didn’t get it wrong, just didn’t print the whole story,
Which is that 80% of the AstraZ vaccine will be made by two biotech firms in England and ‘finished’ by a firm in Wrexham.
Until then it will be made in Netherlands and Germany.
There shouldn’t be problems with supply in any case.

Commenting on reports on mixing vaccines, Dr Mary Ramsay, Head of Immunisations at PHE, said: “We do not recommend mixing the COVID-19 vaccines – if your first dose is the Pfizer vaccine you should not be given the AstraZeneca vaccine for your second dose and vice versa.”

It's a little worrying to think that PHE England wouldn't meet lemongrove's definition of scientists or people who know what they're talking about.

lemongrove

That was from the BBC news website Whitewave.....so blame them.

But you alway check your sources, I believe that you advised me to do that a couple of posts ago?

growstuff

Is the FT article behind a paywall WW?

No - try Googling it only I can’t do links. Also The Irish Times has similar information.