U.K. tests more than any Country in Europe

I wonder if the sort of propaganda put out by the government leading up to July 19th contributed towards the young thinking it was all over bar the shouting and therefore no urgency to get vaccinated?

Listened to LBC this morning. There seems to be a supply issue with the Pfizer vaccine. There were a couple of nurses saying they were having to cancel vaccinations because they had not received a supply for booked vaccinations. As the younger generations are not being given the AZ vaccine and we have a shortage of delivery drivers, this could account for some younger people not being vaccinated.

Whitewavemark2

I also believe that there are supply issues.

People in the know have been saying that for ages.

The UK ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTEch vaccine and they've been used or kept in reserve for second doses.

Only mRNA vaccines (currently Pfizer and Moderna) are recommended for younger people. There are reports that people under 18 with health issues have been having problems booking jabs.

When he was Health Secretary, Matt Hancock said the the UK had secured additional Pfizer doses "in the autumn", but refused to commit to an actual date.

Despite the PR about younger people not needing to be vaccinated, there's now thankfully been a U-turn, but it's been obvious for ages that the reason they weren't offered jabs was because of shortages, not safety concerns. Unfortunately, that's meant there's been a cover up about how serious Covid can be for younger people. It's not really surprising that they don't know who to believe.

I'm not getting into any arguments, I don't have the will...

But "getting what we ordered and having what we expected" isn't the same as "shortages".

Mamie

This is interesting.

It is, Mamie although it shows Wales as a whole and, as the incidences vary a lot within Wales, it seems to be not specific enough.
Other areas in Europe are shown in more detail.

Alegrias1

I'm not getting into any arguments, I don't have the will...

But "getting what we ordered and having what we expected" isn't the same as "shortages".

Well, yes, it is. The issue is that the UK has used up all the doses which could be used for younger people, which is why other countries have been vaccinating teenagers, but the UK hasn't.

I'm afraid I'm not bothered if you don't have the energy to argue. That's just how it is and there is no argument.

I don't understand what you mean by "getting what we ordered and having what we expected". It's a matter of public record that the UK ordered 40 million Pfizer doses and just over 8 million Moderna doses. It doesn't take a maths degree to work out that 48 million isn't enough to vaccinate all those who have already been jabbed PLUS the the younger people for whom mRNA are the only vaccines.

OK, I've had my lunch so my energy levels are refilled.

"I'm not bothered"?

Personally, I think we should definitely be vaccinating over 12s. But we've been vaccinating other people. "Shortages" implies that supplies are not arriving, or we didn't order enough. I believe you have inside knowledge growstuff but I've given up counting how many doses we have ordered and how many have arrived.

People will know that I'm no fan of this government. But the UK has played a blinder with vaccines and now we're really at the stage of saying "well, we should have done this, not that". Well we did what we did and it saved people's lives. Its not useful to find fault, IMO. Let's just get on with it.

Our surgery is preparing to start booster jabs in December, believe the over 50’s was the press conjecture for boosters.

I think you are both saying the same thing though, that there wasn't enough doses ordered so it's not a shortage, they under ordered?

One of mine is due his second in a few weeks, I'll let you know if it is cancelled

The UK government have ordered 457 million doses of vaccines of various makes.

www.statista.com/statistics/1193154/covid-19-vaccine-doses-ordered-by-the-uk/

They ordered before they had even been approved. They took a chance on it all. Yes, maybe they should have ordered more of type X and less of type Y, and for sure not everything they have ordered will have arrived yet, or even been approved. But nobody has a crystal ball.

I can't believe I'm defending this government

it's a good job Matt Hancock watched contagion

The U.K. must have sufficient supplies of Pfizer/Moderna to announce the vaccination of 16/17 yr olds from September.

I believe that they think that they have sufficient for one jab.

But I’m totally puzzled by what was announced.

We know that one jab isn’t sufficient to give proper protection, but they then went on to say that they want to leave at least 12 weeks between jabs.

All a bit weird

GrannyGravy13

The U.K. must have sufficient supplies of Pfizer/Moderna to announce the vaccination of 16/17 yr olds from September.

The fact is that the UK has received 40 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccuine, which is what it initially ordered. It has also used approximately the same number of doses. That can be checked from government sources.

There has been pressure to vaccinate under 18 year olds, which is what other countries have already started doing. The scientific consensus is that this would be the right thing to do. However, there has been spin suggesting that it's unnecessary and even dangerous. That PR has not been based on science, but on the fact that there aren't enough doses to do what scientists, medics and others have wanted. In my book, that's a "shortage", so I don't know why you're trying to defend the indefensible.

More Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are due "in the autumn", which is why the government is now saying 16 and 17 year olds will be vaccinated. This isn't a decision based on science, but the availability of vaccines. The stuff about vaccination being more dangerous than Covid itself for teenagers is nonsense, but that's what the spin has been, to cover up the real reason for not vaccinating them sooner.

There are people who have believed what the government itself has been saying about the dangers of vaccinating young people. It's not surprising that some of them are now confused and reluctant. Greater transparency would have avoided the need for cover ups and spin.

There are still no plans in place to vaccinate vulnerable 12-15 year olds, which was announced three weeks ago, and nothing on the rollout to all over 16 year olds. There are no plans in place, which is causing confusion. This is reminiscent of the initial rollout, when GPs and others didn't know what was going on and were spending their time trying to answer questions to which they had no answers. In England at least, the national booking system is till not taking bookings for vulnerable 12-15 year olds. Schools and colleges have not been informed of the role they will probably play in vaccinations.

Covid and vaccination is dangerous to a tiny, tiny, minority of teenagers. We know that Covid will unfortunately affect a minute number of teenagers badly, but we also know that vaccination causes inflammation of the heart in an equally minute number of teenagers. Everything we do in life, whether we are a teenager or an old codger, has risk.

Crikey GrannyGravy, I knew the UK did more tests than others, but the graph surprised me. We do so many more than other countries, so it would stand to reason that we find more cases.

maddyone

Covid and vaccination is dangerous to a tiny, tiny, minority of teenagers. We know that Covid will unfortunately affect a minute number of teenagers badly, but we also know that vaccination causes inflammation of the heart in an equally minute number of teenagers. Everything we do in life, whether we are a teenager or an old codger, has risk.

Well, blow me down! I never realised everything was so risky!

The issue is that some young people (especially teenagers) are seriously affected by Covid and some of them are suffering long Covid, whatever the government spin claims. In my opinion, it's disgusting that the health of these people (even if they do make up a small group) matters so little to some.

It isn't an equally minute number of teenagers who are affected by heart problems after vaccination. It's many times fewer.

And some teenagers die through an overdose of illegal drugs.
And some teenagers die through speeding in a car shortly after learning to drive.
And every summer some teenagers die because they jump off cliffs into the sea.
And some teenagers die because they ride their bikes without a protective helmet.
Teenagers engage in many risky activities, are you bothered about that? Or is it just Covid and vaccinations that bothers you? Presumably because teenagers who contract Covid are a risk to you, whereas all the other activities don’t cause any risk to you.

Not at all maddyone. I doubt if there are any teenagers who are a personal risk to me because I don't meet any.

Empathy is not restricted to those who affect my personal situation.

Your argument is just one big logical flaw.

As someone who spent most of her working life working with teenagers, it was always part of my role to educate young people about risky behaviour.

maddyone

Crikey GrannyGravy, I knew the UK did more tests than others, but the graph surprised me. We do so many more than other countries, so it would stand to reason that we find more cases.

no Maddy, I'm afraid *GrannyG was wrong. You will see Alegrias pointed this out earlier.
Here's a chart which shows tests per million population and you can see we are at 11th place. Denmark does four times as many tests as us for example.

Oh thank you NotSpaghetti, I’m afraid I’m guilty of not reading the whole thread.

Oops. Apologies for being bold-type heavy!
Not sure what happened there but didn't mean to shout Maddy. Sorry.

No problem, don’t worry about it.

I was going to stay out of it but seeing as my name is mentioned…..

We’re both right, me and GG13. GG13’s data is number of tests per day. Although it looks like the UK is far ahead of everybody else, it doesn’t include every country and of course we have quite a large population. The table that NotSpaghetti showed is the total number of tests per million population since we all started testing, so the two numbers can’t really be compared.

So, I thought of this; the number of tests per thousand people over the last seven days. Austria are streets ahead of us. Iceland and Denmark are about the same as us. Its so difficult to compare but I’m going to try. Can't beat a bit of maths on a Friday evening. Given Austria are testing about 4 times as many people than us per head of population, you’d expect them to find proportionately more cases. You’d expect about 17,000 cases a day in Austria, if the number of cases went up with the amount of testing. They’re actually finding about 500.

It’s not our level of testing that’s leading to high case numbers.

Ta da!!