When will this shit end?

[jparx]

12 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Its a target we can measure them by. I'm glad they've given us one rather than not, and the fact they are doing daily figures from Monday. Better than us not getting anything!

I think we are week 1 into lockdown 3.0 so it's better to start off with some positivity rather than WE ARE ALL DOOMED.

I’m with you mate. If there’s one thing we’re decent at, it’s rolling out a vaccine. We’ve only just got underway with this and there’s nothing wrong with some new year positivity. Let’s see where we’re at in a week or two but for now I’m feeling optimistic. 

[xxialac]

There are unfortunately no grounds to be optimistic we will get to 13m people injected.

"And so it begins (again). Slight-of-hand by Nadhim Zahawi on R4Today earlier talking of 13m first doses being "offered" by mid-February (not "administered"). Expect Serco to be handed a contract to email 10m vaccination appointment invitations anytime soon."

Lie, cheat, manipulate - time after time...

[Copperface]

22 minutes ago, xxialac said:

 

There is NO CHANCE they will do 13 million by mid Feb.

No chance at all.

It's pie in the sky numbers plus we're being 'led' by a bunch of incompetents.

Zahawi showed himself up on Radio 4 this morning to be another one out of his depth - no grasp of detail, rambling, deflecting.

They'll start shifting the terminology and start sending out a tonne of appointment letters for the future and count those as if those are actual vaccines. Mark my words.

They'll do something like 7-10 vaccinations OFFERED by mid Feb and give themselves a huge slap on the back for this. What the NHS are doing is "unprecedented" etc. When it succeeds properly it will be the government that did it, when it fails it will be the NHS that failed.

But it just won't be enough and we will in a more parlous state generally than equivalent countries without piss-poor leadership. 

And that will be on them.

Zahawi described Gavin Williamson as doing 'a tremendous job' this morning. 

Plus, this is also the government that insisted on counting each plastic glove in a sealed pack as one individual item of PPE. 

[gigpusher]

5 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

So far so good. 🙂 

Forgot to include in that that the hospital is closed to visitors so the infection must have come from staff or other patients (on a specialist non-covid ward).

Also forgot to include that patient was due for discharge but is now stuck in hospital to self-isolate for 2 weeks (tho with covid at that age, an excellent place to be!).

-----

It's raised an interesting question about the daily covid stats. Does a patient who catches covid in hospital become one of the numbers on the dashboard for admitted to hospital with covid?

Hope she's better soon. I do know of a colleague whose 98 year old Grandad has recovered from covid. 

[xxialac]

Boss: "Have you done all those urgent reports I asked for by today"

Me: "Yes, I've scheduled to do them all".

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, xxialac said:

There are unfortunately no grounds to be optimistic we will get to 13m people injected.

"And so it begins (again). Slight-of-hand by Nadhim Zahawi on R4Today earlier talking of 13m first doses being "offered" by mid-February (not "administered"). Expect Serco to be handed a contract to email 10m vaccination appointment invitations anytime soon."

Lie, cheat, manipulate - time after time...

I don’t know how many times this happens but you’ll still have some giving them the benefit of the doubt. How many times do they need to fuck up before people stop giving them chances!?

[xxialac]

If we're looking for some good news, we'll have to make do for now with some from across the transatlantic:

Jon Favreau
@jonfavs
In just four years, Donald Trump cost the Republican Party: the House, the Senate, and the presidency. Well done, sir!

Edited January 6, 2021 by xxialac

[steviewevie]

I don't have a great deal of confidence that this govt will manage this vaccine rollout effectively, but let's see...the main thing is we have these vaccines and I really didn't think we would so early.

[waltere]

44 minutes ago, MEGABOWL said:

Just about to go and have a discussion with U.K. wife

As opposed to the foreign wife? 😜

[MEGABOWL]

50 minutes ago, FestivalJamie said:

Agreed. At the end of the day they shouldn’t be announcing 13-14 million first dose by mid fed. That’s over 2 million a week. At the moment we are hitting about 400,000 a week. It’s not a realistic target so why announce unrealistic numbers...again?

They never learn. If they said they were aiming for a million a week and achieved it, great, everybody’s happy. They do nobody any favours by over-forecasting.

[MEGABOWL]

Just now, waltere said:

As opposed to the foreign wife? 😜

Haha whoops. She reads this site sometimes as well 😂

[MEGABOWL]

1 minute ago, steviewevie said:

I don't have a great deal of confidence that this govt will manage this vaccine rollout effectively, but let's see...the main thing is we have these vaccines and I really didn't think we would so early.

Nothing wrong with ‘let’s see.’ They’ve shown themselves to be completely incompetent but they may get this right. I think at times the desperation to criticise the Government is counter productive. They provide plenty of opportunity so we don’t need to rush into it where it isn’t justified.

[MEGABOWL]

8 minutes ago, xxialac said:

If we're looking for some good news, we'll have to make do for now with some from across the transatlantic:

Jon Favreau
@jonfavs
In just four years, Donald Trump cost the Republican Party: the House, the Senate, and the presidency. Well done, sir!

What a loser!

[DeanoL]

10 hours ago, RobertProsineckisLighter said:

I don't disagree after the care homes debacle that is probably the second 'most criminal' act of this government and I hope their day in the dock comes although I suspect it won't. 

This again isn't a situation unique to the UK though. Its just that we are understandably far more aware of it here. 

I dunno - I think care homes are down to ignorance, the test and trace thing is malice. They should have known better on care homes but appeared not to. I don't think that was the case with test and trace: I think they did know better and chose to give money to their friends instead.

9 hours ago, RobertProsineckisLighter said:

I think we will just about mange it - we have far more infrastructure and experience in this sort of thing than many of the other challenges the country has faced during this pandemic to date. 

I felt that way until yesterday, when (as Neil just noted) they said they wouldn't be using the existing infrastructure (and presumably experience) for this. All the infrastructure in pharmacies that is used for blood tests and flu vaccinations isn't be used. They're building new stuff. I can half understand this - the 15 minute wait versus 5 minute wait after injection for the two vaccines makes a huge change in what the optimum layout of any *place* should be: you want people to have the vaccine, then to a waiting room with other people where they can be monitored by someone else for 15 minutes. Then you get a far quicker turnaround than each vaccine taking 20 minutes.

However - phlebotomists who do these blood tests and flu jabs at pharmacies are not being asked, as a whole, to be the vaccinators. They're asking for volunteers from everywhere, but not specifically these people. So these people are available, as are the sites. So... use them? Yes, my pharmacy can only do 3 vaccinations an hour whereas a mass-vaccination site a single member of staff can probably do 20 an hour. It's far more efficient. But it shouldn't be either-or. If there's vaccine available, it should go to the pharmacies as 3 an hour, 8 hours a day, 14000 sites is another 336000 jabs. 

(As I've been writing this they've announced they will start using pharmacies but I put enough effort in I don't want to delete it now!)

41 minutes ago, RobertProsineckisLighter said:

What do you think the government or anyone else in the UK for that matter should have done about the global glass vials shortage? Short of ramping up our own production (if we even have any companies in the UK that do it) we're a bit stuck. 

Surely we always knew we were going to need glass vials though? I mean, we pre-ordered a load of different vaccines speculatively, someone should have said "maybe we need to order the things to put them in" at some point. Nothing to be done now, but we always knew the vaccine was the endgame and they were being considered back in April/May last year, they've had well over half a year to sort it. We could have set up manufacturing facilities ourselves in that time!

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, MEGABOWL said:

They never learn. If they said they were aiming for a million a week and achieved it, great, everybody’s happy. They do nobody any favours by over-forecasting.

I guess maybe if they set a really tough targets it makes all parts of the process work extra hard to meet those targets...

Where did the need to hit 2mill a week come from? Is it so can lift restrictions by Easter?

[fraybentos1]

I get that 2 million people a week is a big logistical challenge of course it is. But I don't see the argument of we are only doing 400k a week now so it is impossible. It is clear it is going to get ramped up big time in the coming weeks- by how much remains to be seen but if the supply is there I think 2 million a week is doable. We do millions for the flu jab every year over a pretty short time frame. 

On another note I went a walk last night at 6 ish and saw a steady stream of people going in the new Louisa Jordan NHS Hospital in Glasgow to get their jag. Was positive to see!

[jparx]

I’m optimistic that we’ll get a decent number of people jabbed over the next few months. I don’t care about the random targets the govt pluck out the air and I’d be surprised if they meet them. I’ll be happy to jump on them when they fail as I consistently have over the last decade and I’m not giving them the benefit the doubt by any means.

My optimism is that we’ll see a good number of people vaccinated, the NHS staff will do an amazing job with the process and we’ll start to get through this. 

[squirrelarmy]

4 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Where did the need to hit 2mill a week come from? Is it so can lift restrictions by Easter?

They say Easter but the real target is being able to lift restrictions by Cheltenham. 

[topmarksbri]

10 hours ago, xxialac said:

In other news Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are getting divorced. Suspect they fell out over their views on the UK government's response to Covid.

Couldn't agree on whether or not Foals/1975 were big enough to headline....

[zahidf]

Police overreach?

 

[xxialac]

I think the point that is not being said on here enough is that that the high ambition (13 million by mid-February) is only now necessary in the first place because they have been incredibly weak and indecisive and not shown the leadership this country deserves.

They will probably get to 7-10 million jabs and under normal circumstances that would be great and enough.

But with the virus now raging at the 60k mark (France 20k, Germany 18k, Italy 15k, Spain 20k), the pace won't be fast enough and the UK will be the covid case outlier among European countries with similar populations.

[Guest]

There is also doubt that the current lockdown we are in is enough to get the virus back down. So that adds to the vaccination pressures too. 

[JoeyT]

I still find it odd that teachers aren't on the list to be vaccinated early.

[Toilet Duck]

19 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Surely we always knew we were going to need glass vials though? I mean, we pre-ordered a load of different vaccines speculatively, someone should have said "maybe we need to order the things to put them in" at some point. Nothing to be done now, but we always knew the vaccine was the endgame and they were being considered back in April/May last year, they've had well over half a year to sort it. We could have set up manufacturing facilities ourselves in that time!

You're right, of course they should be piggy backing on the existing infrastructure (as well as using new sites for mass vaccination). Makes no sense for it to be either/or, so glad this seems to be moving. 

On the glass vials part, a bit of creative thinking might help speed things up. Rovi in Spain have signed a fill/finish contract with Moderna for their vaccine. They provide pre-filled syringes rather than multi-dose glass vials. Catalent are doing the same for them in the US. I know J&J are using Catalent as well, so hopefully different options will be available for a selection of the vaccines that don't need glass. 

[xxialac]

Johnson had a choice:

1. "Boris saves Christmas!" news headline

+ Be responsible for a tonne of extra deaths and misery down the line but can always spin it away and talk up the 'British' vaccine'

2. "Boris cancels Christmas" news headline

+ Be unpopular at the time but then vindicated as the right decision later on and be retrospectively praised for showing strong leadership.

He chose the instant gratification route over the 'difficult but right thing to do' path. He always does...