Continuation Covid-19 and Politics pt 2

[Captain_Swoop]

Covid vaccine: 72% of black people unlikely to have jab, UK survey finds
Sage voices concern at BAME uptake and says more must be done to increase trust in vaccine

Advisers from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) have raised fresh concerns over Covid vaccine uptake among black, Asian and minority ethnic communities (BAME) as research showed up to 72% of black people said they were unlikely to have the jab.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...e_iOSApp_Other

[jimbob]

Ah, one of the Covid deniers Ivor Cummins Quote tweeted me - and used an annotated version of my graph to claim that Sweden's excess deaths are normal.

https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/statu...83744411947012


So I've modified my Sweden excess death count to start at the first COVID-19 death





He might persuade his innumerate followers, but...

[jimbob]

Oh and he "likes" this tweet

https://twitter.com/MarcVegt/status/1350584739011452932



The thing is, that he seems pretty influential amongst the lockdown sceptics.

[The Don]

Oh dear. Government ministers on the telly saying they'll review lockdown when the most vulnerable have been vaccinated - targeted for mid February.

Will they never learn ? Pandering results in tens of thousands of deaths.

[Vixen]

Originally Posted by Planigale

I don't think they did within the EU? They may have had some testing restrictions, but they were not allowed a travel ban with regard to EU citizens.

Since the major source of transmission to the UK originally was from Europe this is the most relevant. Very little Covid -19 has been imported into the UK from China, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, even the US etc. The vast majority was from the EU. One of the principles of the EU is free movement of peoples. If the UK allowed UK citizens to enter the UK they had to allow EU citizens to enter the UK. I think at the critical point early 2020 with thousands of families on holiday in Europe preventing their return or even quarantining for 14 days would have been practically impossible. I suspect there was not then the resources available to test everyone prior to return (or even after return).

Finland had a blanket travel ban in March. So you see, EU countries do have their own sovereignty. The government implemented a 'State of Emergency' and that was that. Freedom of Movement does not mean EU countries cannot control their borders.

Yesterday, there were 236 new infections. Travel restrictions have now relaxed to only apply to high-risk countries, such as the UK, so there are a lot of native Finns stuck in the UK ATM as Finnair are flying planes back from London empty. This has been the case since 21 Dec 2020 and set to last until 18 Jan 2021, when it will be reviewed.

[gypsyjackson]

Originally Posted by zooterkin

I have no idea, but someone here was saying they weren't.

ETA: Here you go.

Which is slightly more than the latest figure I could find for the population of England...

I’m probably still registered at a surgery in Croydon. I guess there will be a bunch of migrants each way who mess up the figures.

[Wudang]

Originally Posted by zooterkin

I have no idea, but someone here was saying they weren't.

ETA: Here you go.

Which is slightly more than the latest figure I could find for the population of England...

Processing GP data I can tell you it's highly suspect.

[Captain_Swoop]

Emma Kennedy tweets

@EmmaKennedy
When you look at other island nations who stopped air travel completely then insisted on testing prior to arrival and quarantine on arrival and are now leading normal lives it beggars belief that our turn to do all this starts…tomorrow.

[Ulf Nereng]

Originally Posted by Vixen

Finland had a blanket travel ban in March. So you see, EU countries do have their own sovereignty. The government implemented a 'State of Emergency' and that was that. Freedom of Movement does not mean EU countries cannot control their borders.

Yesterday, there were 236 new infections. Travel restrictions have now relaxed to only apply to high-risk countries, such as the UK, so there are a lot of native Finns stuck in the UK ATM as Finnair are flying planes back from London empty. This has been the case since 21 Dec 2020 and set to last until 18 Jan 2021, when it will be reviewed.

I think most or all EU countries did this at some point. We certainly did here in Norway despite being part of Schengen. Our dear friends, the Swedish, were a bit angry about it when we closed our border to them and posted soldiers to enforce it.

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by Ulf Nereng

I think most or all EU countries did this at some point. We certainly did here in Norway despite being part of Schengen. Our dear friends, the Swedish, were a bit angry about it when we closed our border to them and posted soldiers to enforce it.

Just for reference, here is what this century's weekly deaths data looks like for Norway


And this for England and Wales



And I had to hide the full horror of April to show that November and December were abnormal too

Or cumulative deaths for 2015 onwards

Norway:


England and Wales:


Sweden:


We should be angry that we didn't follow Norway's lead

[Ulf Nereng]

Yes, i can't complain about my governments handling of the pandemic so far. New cases are still refusing to go down after x-mas, but it's at a level that most other countries can only dream about. They made a mistake in late summer when they buckled under pressure from industry to relieve the 14 day quarantine rule for EU workers, though. Instead these workers were allowed entry if they had two negative tests taken a few days apart. This was against strong opposition from FHI. This testing regime failed to prevent some infected EU workers from entering, and it was the beginning of the new wave in the fall. I think the story shows how hard it can be for a government to resist when party donors come complaining.

[The Don]

The Office of National Statistics has produced an analysis of Covid clusters. A summary is published here:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...es-interactive

There's far more information there than I can easily process. I was led to this page by a BBC report on the results with respect to Wales:

Quote:

Analysis of Covid-19 deaths in the first wave of the pandemic in Wales has showed how the virus took a grip at very local levels of the country.

Experts found not all deaths could be explained by factors such as economic deprivation, age and ethnicity.

Clusters in some parts of rural Wales persisted, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) research,

It suggests more work is needed to look at factors like travel and high risk occupations.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55661507

I was most interested in my local area, but it turns out that we've not been part of a cluster. I think that's good news unless it's just a case of not being part of a cluster YET.

[The Don]

It looks like Wales is experiencing some issues with our vaccination programme.

Quote:

Wales' first minister has been accused of a "go-slow" vaccination strategy after he defended the speed of the Covid jab roll-out.

Public Health Wales said 151,737 people have been vaccinated, after at least 327,000 doses were delivered.

Mark Drakeford said one of the reasons more of the supply had not been used at once was to prevent "vaccinators standing around with nothing to do".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-55704017

As someone in the lowest tier of people to receive priority vaccination, I had hoped to get my first vaccination for my birthday at the end of May. This is now in doubt.

The question I want answering is - If Wales has vaccination capacity in excess of vaccination supply, is it a supply issue, or has Wales jumped the gun ?

[Darat]

We’re number one!!!!

Johnson said Britain would see a resurgence and claim our rightful place at as the number one country in the world:

The UK now has the highest death rate from Covid-19 of any country in the world, the latest data has revealed.

[wobs]

Originally Posted by Darat

We’re number one!!!!

Johnson said Britain would see a resurgence and claim our rightful place at as the number one country in the world:

The UK now has the highest death rate from Covid-19 of any country in the world, the latest data has revealed.

We didn't do so good at the end of Q2 2020 in terms of loss of GDP to deaths per 100,000 either:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/q...=&region=World

Also, here is a chart showing how bad we are, with only Peru doing worse, and Spain being the nearest developed country (slightly worse still).
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy

And yet we still seem to have not learnt.

[The Don]

Originally Posted by wobs

We didn't do so good at the end of Q2 2020 in terms of loss of GDP to deaths per 100,000 either:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/q...=&region=World

Also, here is a chart showing how bad we are, with only Peru doing worse, and Spain being the nearest developed country (slightly worse still).
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy

And yet we still seem to have not learnt.

tbh, to be top of both the death chart, and the economic impact chart is a heck of an "achievement"

[Ulf Nereng]

To paraphraze Pink Floyd:

Would you like to see Britannia rule again, my friend?
All you have to do is follow the worms
Would you like to send our colored cousins home again, my friend?
All you have to do is vote for the worms

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by The Don

tbh, to be top of both the death chart, and the economic impact chart is a heck of an "achievement"

Michael Yeadon and Ivor Cummins are still claiming it's a normal winter.

And getting traction in the Telegraph and Spectator.

[Captain_Swoop]

David Schneider

Could it be that the success of the vaccine rollout compared to, say, Test & Trace is because the government have allowed the NHS and local health practitioners to do it instead of their donors, pals and the bloke who runs their local pub?
Of course, even on vaccines you can always rely on our government to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by The Don

As someone in the lowest tier of people to receive priority vaccination, I had hoped to get my first vaccination for my birthday at the end of May. This is now in doubt.

My cohort is still allegedly in line to get the first dose by the end of February. I don't get it, what are you lot doing wrong? We've got every journalist in the country screaming at us that we're going slower than England and this is a disgrace, when actually we started doing care home residents first because they're more at risk, while England was doing anyone at all over 80 from the start. But the care home residents are nearly done so we should pick up the pace now.

I read that Scotland had a roll-out plan that was praised by some scientific group as being more rational than what was happening in England and then Westminster stepped in and said no we won't let you do it like that. The whole thing is ridiculously political and certainly here the entire point of it all is to find some metric to point to so that the journos can scream "you're behind England, you're useless, this is a scandal" and so on.

[The Don]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

My cohort is still allegedly in line to get the first dose by the end of February. I don't get it, what are you lot doing wrong?

Allegedly it's a shortage of the vaccine - or more accurately a future shortage of the vaccine. The Welsh government could ramp up the rate of vaccination to get back on a par with England but Wales would the run out of vaccine well before the next delivery which is due in 4 weeks or so.

Mark Drakeford has reportedly taken the decision to vaccinate at rate X for 4 weeks rather than vaccinate at rate 2X for 2 weeks and do nothing for the next 2 weeks. If true, that sounds like a sensible decision to me.

Also if true, why hasn't Wales received its fair share of the vaccine ? Is England vaccinating like Billy-yo but will suddenly come to a grinding halt in a couple of weeks ? It certainly sounds like the UK government's MO, go for the positive headlines today and find some foreigners to blame when it all goes wrong in a couple of weeks time.

Then again, I've heard that the issue is that Wales lacks the resources to deliver the Pfizer vaccine nationwide and that there are only a couple of places equipped to deliver it. As a consequence, Wales is more dependent on the AstraZeneca vaccine.

I read that the Pfizer vaccine is now in short supply nationally and that we will all be more dependent on the AstraZeneca vaccine. This worries me because IIRC the AstraZeneca vaccine is only 70% effective at delivering immunity via the first dose (as opposed to 90%+ for the Pfizer vaccine). If true that means that the (at least IMO) 12 weeks between doses will compromise the herd immunity very badly indeed.

[The Don]

Originally Posted by The Don

I read that the Pfizer vaccine is now in short supply nationally and that we will all be more dependent on the AstraZeneca vaccine. This worries me because IIRC the AstraZeneca vaccine is only 70% effective at delivering immunity via the first dose (as opposed to 90%+ for the Pfizer vaccine). If true that means that the (at least IMO) 12 weeks between doses will compromise the herd immunity very badly indeed.

Seems like I was right to be concerned:

Quote:

For the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, things are a bit different. In a paper published in January, the authors explain that the vaccine offers protection of 64.1% after at least one standard dose. This compares to 70.4% if you've had two full doses, or – oddly – 90% in people who have had one half dose followed by one full dose.

Meanwhile, based on these unpublished data they have seen, the Vaccine Committee has estimated that, from three weeks until 9-12 weeks after the first injection, the vaccine prevents around 70% of cases of serious disease.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...e-vaccine-dose

Though I was wrong about the Pfizer vaccine, it's nowhere near as effective as I had thought

Quote:

According to Pfizer data published in December 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is roughly 52% effective after the first dose. Out of 36,523 participants in the phase three trial – the final stage of testing where people either received two full doses, 21 days apart, or a placebo – who had no evidence of existing infection, 82 people in the placebo group and 39 in the vaccine group developed Covid-19 symptoms.

However, this early protection comes with some important caveats. First, the protection doesn't kick in until at least day 12 – until then, there was no difference between the two groups. Secondly, one dose is still significantly less protective than two. The latter is 95% effective at preventing the disease after a week.

It seems like one vaccine isn't going to create herd immunity. It may help reduce the strain on the NHS.

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Originally Posted by The Don

Seems like I was right to be concerned:



https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...e-vaccine-dose

Though I was wrong about the Pfizer vaccine, it's nowhere near as effective as I had thought



It seems like one vaccine isn't going to create herd immunity. It may help reduce the strain on the NHS.

Is the BBC story right about the AZ vaccine being half a dose then a full dose? I thought it was the opposite way around? If it is correct does that mean that everyone getting this vaccine now is only getting a half dose? And how effective is that alone?

[The Don]

Looks like we've really got a grip on the second (or it is third) wave now.

Quote:

Overall, the total number of deaths reported are more than 40% above what is expected at this time of year, although delays registering deaths over the festive period are thought to have contributed to some of the rise.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-5...ost_type=share

Looks like the kind of statistics which would suggest that an early lifting of "lockdown" (which isn't really a lockdown) restrictions in England is on the cards.

[Tolls]

Originally Posted by Archie Gemmill Goal

Is the BBC story right about the AZ vaccine being half a dose then a full dose? I thought it was the opposite way around? If it is correct does that mean that everyone getting this vaccine now is only getting a half dose? And how effective is that alone?

The half dose data is from an error during the trials, so is not what is being provided as it would need more analysis (eg the age groups of the people who were mistakenly given a half dose). Consequently the regime is two full doses.

[Darat]

My mother has received a letter sent to the high risk people in the UK and they are offering 3 months of Vitamin D supplements. - presumably someone has realised that this group of people have been pretty much told to stay in their homes for the last 10 months - so far. This group has a large number of elderly folk and the online only application is anything but straightforward, tons of questions to see if you are eligible. Right at the end it tells you that you will hear if you are eligible within 3 months....

Another example of penny wise and pound foolishness. The sensible approach would have been to start sending out the supplements to this group regardless of “eligibility”.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by The Don

Looks like we've really got a grip on the second (or it is third) wave now.

...snip...

First wave.

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Originally Posted by Tolls

The half dose data is from an error during the trials, so is not what is being provided as it would need more analysis (eg the age groups of the people who were mistakenly given a half dose). Consequently the regime is two full doses.

Ah right. Makes sense then. For some reason I thought when they identified the increased effectiveness they switched the recommend dosage.

[KDLarsen]

For what it's worth, here's the Danish Health Agency's plan for rolling out of the vaccine: https://www.sst.dk/-/media/Udgivelse...der-8-jan.ashx

The list goes like this:
Citizens in care homes
Citizens over the age of 65, who recieves aid & care in their own homes
Citizens over the age of 85
Frontline personnel in the health, nursing & social care sectors
Select high-risk patients
Close relatives of the above group
Citizens aged 80-85
Citizens aged 75-79
Citizens aged 65-74
Citizens below the age of 65 with increased risk due to existing health conditions
Workers carrying out critical tasks (police, etc.)
All other citizens above the age of 16

So far, 174,317 have recieved the first dose, while 2844 have recieved their second dose . Much to my bemusement, my GP was the doctor who delivered the first jab back in late December. The gentleman who recieved it recieved his second dose over the weekend, and declared that he'd be celebrating with a glance through an encyclopedia and a beer

[Captain_Swoop]

UK records new daily high of 1,610 deaths

A further 1,610 people have died in the UK within 28 days of a positive Covid test - the biggest figure reported in a single day since the pandemic began.

It means the total number of deaths by that measure is now above 90,000.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55722168

[Captain_Swoop]

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis says you 'can’t make international comparisons' as to why Britain has the worst Covid death rate in the world.

Piers Morgan asked "Given that you’ve been using international comparisons about the vaccine it’s not unreasonable to ask you why we have the worst death rate in the world."

Lewis replied "We cannot answer that question right now."

Any government who can’t begin to answer a question "why do we have the highest death rate in the world" isn't a govt you can trust to have a plan to get us out of this.

[The Don]

The UK Government's Covid response has been dreadful but apparently now is not the time to analyse and try to learn from it - according to Priti Patel.

Quote:

Patel told BBC Breakfast it was not the time to talk about “mismanagement”, and said governments across the world are making different decisions on how to control the virus, depending on the scientific advice they are given.

“I am sure in the future we will all look back and with a degree of humility I would say as to perhaps measures which could have perhaps been taken,” she said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-5...ost_type=share

Let me guess - in 6 months time it'll be too late.

[The Don]

The UK Government seem absolutely incapable of making a plan and sticking to it.

Quote:

The home secretary has now been on BBC Radio 4's Today programme where she discussed the possibility of pushing front-line workers up the queue for a Covid jab.

Priti Patel said work is under way to move "police, fire and front-line workers" higher up the queue to "take the vaccine when that comes".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-5...ost_type=share

I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing. It's just that the government has had the best part of a year to set the priorities and seemed to have done so, splitting those who were the highest priority into 9 groups.

It's just that at the first whiff of some negative publicity for not protecting certain other groups, they're willing to scrap their original plan.

[zooterkin]

Originally Posted by The Don

The UK Government seem absolutely incapable of making a plan and sticking to it.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-5...ost_type=share

I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing. It's just that the government has had the best part of a year to set the priorities and seemed to have done so, splitting those who were the highest priority into 9 groups.

It's just that at the first whiff of some negative publicity for not protecting certain other groups, they're willing to scrap their original plan.

At this rate, both my kids will get the jab before me! I'm over 60, so in group 7 (last time I looked, anyway); my daughter is in group 6 because she has epilepsy (which apparently carries a small additional risk for Covid), and my son is in the Fire Service.

[The Don]

Originally Posted by zooterkin

At this rate, both my kids will get the jab before me! I'm over 60, so in group 7 (last time I looked, anyway); my daughter is in group 6 because she has epilepsy (which apparently carries a small additional risk for Covid), and my son is in the Fire Service.

...and it may very well be absolutely the right thing to do to ensure that the emergency services and teachers get vaccinated early because of their interaction with the public.

A competent government would have decided yay or nay on this as part of their vaccination rollout planning, not reactively decided to do it when they started to get negative headlines and complaints in the media from Cressida Dick.

[The Don]

Looks like the UK is slipping behind its own vaccination plan.

Quote:

The daily statistics show more than 320,000 received their first dose on Friday, but that has steadily been falling since with just over 200,000 jabbed on Monday.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-5...ost_type=share

There are explanatory factors, that there are constrictions in the vaccine supply and that there may have been delays in reporting.

I'm not at all surprised. This government has shown time and time again that it's not capable of doing anything on a large scale. They are at least using existing NHS resources so it's likely that there will merely be delays as opposed to a utter and complete failure to deliver.

edited to add......

In order to meet the target of giving the highest priority 15 million a first vaccination (which clearly is not a full vaccination) by mid-February, the average vaccination rate should be over 380k per day. The most recent daily rate from Monday is just over half of that. It smacks again of the testing debacle, a huge effort (and statistic skulduggery) to meet an arbitrary daily target for one day, followed by a lengthy period where barely half that number were being processed.

I'm worried that the time taken to actually distribute the vaccine, the big gap between first and second vaccines, the low take up rate and the fact that the effectiveness is under 100% and immunity isn't indefinite will mean that what could have been an effective vaccine - had it been rolled out regionally and/or rapidly will fail to deliver herd immunity.

I'm also worried that the government won't implement the effective test and trace programme which will ensure that the pandemic is kept under control.

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Originally Posted by The Don

The UK Government seem absolutely incapable of making a plan and sticking to it.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-5...ost_type=share

I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing. It's just that the government has had the best part of a year to set the priorities and seemed to have done so, splitting those who were the highest priority into 9 groups.

It's just that at the first whiff of some negative publicity for not protecting certain other groups, they're willing to scrap their original plan.

I suppose you do have to give them credit for being willing to adapt to what might be a fluid situation but it doesn't give you much confidence in them knowing what the hell they are doing.

A change in policy should be accompanied by the changing information that has caused them to change the policy and that's the bit that is always missing.

For the record I think that vaccinating the people who are most likely to be in contact with the virus and spread it makes sense to me on the face of it. But I don't have the data to be making that determination using anything other than a bit of educated guesswork.

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Originally Posted by The Don

Looks like the UK is slipping behind its own vaccination plan.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-5...ost_type=share

There are explanatory factors, that there are constrictions in the vaccine supply and that there may have been delays in reporting.

I'm not at all surprised. This government has shown time and time again that it's not capable of doing anything on a large scale. They are at least using existing NHS resources so it's likely that there will merely be delays as opposed to a utter and complete failure to deliver.

edited to add......

In order to meet the target of giving the highest priority 15 million a first vaccination (which clearly is not a full vaccination) by mid-February, the average vaccination rate should be over 380k per day. The most recent daily rate from Monday is just over half of that. It smacks again of the testing debacle, a huge effort (and statistic skulduggery) to meet an arbitrary daily target for one day, followed by a lengthy period where barely half that number were being processed.

I'm worried that the time taken to actually distribute the vaccine, the big gap between first and second vaccines, the low take up rate and the fact that the effectiveness is under 100% and immunity isn't indefinite will mean that what could have been an effective vaccine - had it been rolled out regionally and/or rapidly will fail to deliver herd immunity.

I'm also worried that the government won't implement the effective test and trace programme which will ensure that the pandemic is kept under control.

While we are behind where we want to be it seems we are still doing OK relative to other places. Though I'd love to know what Israel and the UAE are doing differently...being racist seems to be helping the Israeli numbers.

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...cination-drive

[Darat]

The real issue is that the vaccine rollout is something that could have been planned down to every single nut, bolt and needle months and months ago, with a number of variations depending on which vaccines came on stream first, number of jabs and jabbers available and so on. Personally I would have also planned for a few “natural disasters” such as a regional centre being closed because of local flooding.

Those plans could have been published along with all the data for a mass “peer review” - again months ago.

The vaccine rollout should have been a matter of selecting which plan to activate, there shouldn’t be any requirement for any significant changes.

[The Don]

Originally Posted by Archie Gemmill Goal

I suppose you do have to give them credit for being willing to adapt to what might be a fluid situation but it doesn't give you much confidence in them knowing what the hell they are doing.

A change in policy should be accompanied by the changing information that has caused them to change the policy and that's the bit that is always missing.

For the record I think that vaccinating the people who are most likely to be in contact with the virus and spread it makes sense to me on the face of it. But I don't have the data to be making that determination using anything other than a bit of educated guesswork.

Yes, I think a case can be made, but that same case could have been made as part of the original planning exercise. IMO this is simply another knee-jerk reaction from a government motivated by a need for positive headlines.