When will this shit end?

[efcfanwirral]

1 hour ago, shoptildrop said:

Never used to bother me before but since I hit my 40s I'm like a human kebab to them!! And it's always my legs, the buggers even get through the jungle formula that I spray on like the lynx ad... mozzies always find a way 😞

My girlfriend is the same (not sure on the blood type bit). When we travelled SE Asia she was getting multiple bites and they all got massive, I'd get a lot less and mine would itch for a while and then just go away. Drove her mad 

[zahidf]

 

[SheffJeff]

Niche question here so apologies but can't find anything on Google and I know there's alot of knowledgeable people on here. Does anyone know whether people who have been sectioned have been getting vaccinated? Got a friend who was supposed to get jabbed on Thursday but he went AWOL and is now in hospital. He's high risk (obese, diabetic, asthmatic) so I would have hoped he would be but not sure of the legal aspects of vaccinating someone against their will if they aren't in their right mind. He was over the moon to be vaccinated until Tuesday when for some reason he took a turn. I'm just worried as you hear about so many people catching Covid when they're in hospital. Thanks for any info in advance.

[stuartbert two hats]

1 minute ago, zahidf said:

 

Alternative reading: Germany didn't approve vaccine for an age group because there wasn't any trial evidence. Then approves vaccine for age group when there was trial evidence in that age group.

[Losing my hair]

22 minutes ago, zahidf said:

 

There's 122,849 reasons why being smug is not a good look. 

[Mr.Tease]

21 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Alternative reading: Germany didn't approve vaccine for an age group because there wasn't any trial evidence. Then approves vaccine for age group when there was trial evidence in that age group.

Not really sure why some British people took this decision by the German health regulators personally, as if they'd baked them a cake and they'd refused to eat it out of spite. They decided to be cautious, it wasn't an unreasonable call. 

[zahidf]

24 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Alternative reading: Germany didn't approve vaccine for an age group because there wasn't any trial evidence. Then approves vaccine for age group when there was trial evidence in that age group.

But their change in mind is clearly because of the well documented issues they are having in using their vaccine rollout. 

[stuartbert two hats]

5 minutes ago, zahidf said:

But their change in mind is clearly because of the well documented issues they are having in using their vaccine rollout. 

What, not because hard evidence came in that worked in the over 65s? Something that did not exist before, so was a calculated risk on the UKs part to roll out the vaccine?

There's a simple, scientific explanation for why they didn't approve it before and have approved it now.

[Fuzzy Afro]

11 minutes ago, Mr.Tease said:

Not really sure why some British people took this decision by the German health regulators personally, as if they'd baked them a cake and they'd refused to eat it out of spite. They decided to be cautious, it wasn't an unreasonable call. 

Many of our parents and grandparents will have had the Oxford vaccine, so of course we aren’t going to take too kindly to people telling us that it doesn’t work on over 65’s. It’s an utter embarrassment to Merkel and especially to that idiot Macron who explicitly said something like “the Oxford vaccine is quasi-ineffective in older adults”.

 

I think the French are pretty salty that the GSK/Sanofi effort that they invested heavily in turned out to be a dud.

[BobWillis2]

7 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

What, not because hard evidence came in that worked in the over 65s? Something that did not exist before, so was a calculated risk on the UKs part to roll out the vaccine?

There's a simple, scientific explanation for why they didn't approve it before and have approved it now.

There’s a slight difference between saying there isn’t enough data and saying it doesn’t work in over 65’s, that they’re not using it and then having to backtrack and start giving it to over 65’s. 
 

 

[incident]

9 minutes ago, Mr.Tease said:

Not really sure why some British people took this decision by the German health regulators personally, as if they'd baked them a cake and they'd refused to eat it out of spite. They decided to be cautious, it wasn't an unreasonable call. 

Really? It wasn't so much that people took the actual decision personally, but that they were upset with the despicable messaging surrounding it especially from France and Germany.

The leaks from the German ministry claiming efficacy under 20%, the comments from Macron that "it doesn't work" or whatever his exact words were, and other comments around the same time were all either outright false or vastly misleading and I'm still not convinced they weren't deliberately so due to sour grapes from the supply issues. It's those comments that people took issue with, because they only serve to undermine trust in the vaccine - as has been evidence by the take-up issues in those countries. Thankfully it doesn't seem to have had so much of an impact over here, but it's entirely justifiable and correct to rip into the German and French Governments for their mishandling of this and even if it lead to one person refusing or delaying their vaccine dose, fuck them.

[BobWillis2]

The decisions by the French and German governments, backed by the EU will cost lives and rightly should be called out. 

[stuartbert two hats]

Just now, BobWillis2 said:

There’s a slight difference between saying there isn’t enough data and saying it doesn’t work in over 65’s, that they’re not using it and then having to backtrack and start giving it to over 65’s. 
 

 

Some politicians were full of shit, sure, but the scientists? As far as I'm aware the reason given was "insufficient data"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/28/why-has-germany-advised-against-oxfordastrazeneca-jab-for-over-65s

Anyway, wasn't it just Macron who said it was no good? There may have been some German politicians who said it was defective, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing Merkel would say.

[Mr.Tease]

4 minutes ago, incident said:

Really? It wasn't so much that people took the actual decision personally, but that they were upset with the despicable messaging surrounding it especially from France and Germany.

The leaks from the German ministry claiming efficacy under 20%, the comments from Macron that "it doesn't work" or whatever his exact words were, and other comments around the same time were all either outright false or vastly misleading and I'm still not convinced they weren't deliberately so due to sour grapes from the supply issues. It's those comments that people took issue with, because they only serve to undermine trust in the vaccine - as has been evidence by the take-up issues in those countries. Thankfully it doesn't seem to have had so much of an impact over here, but it's entirely justifiable and correct to rip into the German and French Governments for their mishandling of this and even if it lead to one person refusing or delaying their vaccine dose, fuck them.

You're confusing the decision of the German health regulator with the behaviour of a few dick head politicians (of which we have plenty) 

[incident]

Just now, Mr.Tease said:

You're confusing the decision of the German health regulator with the behaviour of a few dick head politicians (of which we have plenty) 

No, I'm not, I said right in the first line that the decision wasn't the problem.

[BobWillis2]

1 minute ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Some politicians were full of shit, sure, but the scientists? As far as I'm aware the reason given was "insufficient data"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/28/why-has-germany-advised-against-oxfordastrazeneca-jab-for-over-65s

Anyway, wasn't it just Macron who said it was no good? There may have been some German politicians who said it was defective, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing Merkel would say.

Fairly sure German “government sources” were leaking to their press that the efficacy in the elderly was 8%. 

[stuartbert two hats]

1 minute ago, BobWillis2 said:

Fairly sure German “government sources” were leaking to their press that the efficacy in the elderly was 8%. 

Maybe, but the actual reason gave made perfect sense.  I didn't agree with it at the time and agreed the briefing was a load of rubbish - but the official reason given was reasonable and entirely consistent with this new decision.

I don't know the paper who were claiming the 8% figure, it seemed like they did have any actual source at the time, but who knows with the press? 

Anyway, going by what was actually officially said, I wouldn't even call this a U-turn.  However, if France follow suit, that would be a bit more embarrassing!

[BobWillis2]

7 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Maybe, but the actual reason gave made perfect sense.  I didn't agree with it at the time and agreed the briefing was a load of rubbish - but the official reason given was reasonable and entirely consistent with this new decision.

I don't know the paper who were claiming the 8% figure, it seemed like they did have any actual source at the time, but who knows with the press? 

Anyway, going by what was actually officially said, I wouldn't even call this a U-turn.  However, if France follow suit, that would be a bit more embarrassing!

I think they should have been far more pragmatic and not allowed the shit show that occurred to happen and left themselves in a position of having unused vaccines sat waiting for arms even after much better data was available. Only a few days ago Merkel was still saying she won’t have it. 
 

Edit: apparently the merkel story might have been fake news 

Edited February 28, 2021 by BobWillis2

[charlierc]

Wonder if it's one of those things that we'd be hearing less about if it wasn't in the shadow of the big recent UK-EU relationship debate where the conversation is dominated by swathes of Eurosceptics in the press just going nuts and wanting any opportunity to go "See? We told you we're better out of there!" Or at least without Brexit that coverage would not be dressed in such flag-wavey competitive terms in a way that doesn't seem to be the case for, say, the inelegant way the vaccine's been rolled out in Mexico, Japan and probably a few others.

Tbf I had some doubts over the AZ vaccine at first but it seems to be behaving well enough in real world conditions as the data has come in. Certainly, I'm not about to go all Ian Brown if it's all I'm offered.

[fraybentos1]

37 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

What, not because hard evidence came in that worked in the over 65s? Something that did not exist before, so was a calculated risk on the UKs part to roll out the vaccine?

There's a simple, scientific explanation for why they didn't approve it before and have approved it now.

The EU regulator approved it for all ages tho?

Some EU countries have been appalling with their dismissive nature and lies about AZ. Macron in particular should be ashamed of himself.

[xxialac]

1 hour ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Alternative reading: Germany didn't approve vaccine for an age group because there wasn't any trial evidence. Then approves vaccine for age group when there was trial evidence in that age group

The voice of reason.

[Mr.Tease]

31 minutes ago, incident said:

No, I'm not, I said right in the first line that the decision wasn't the problem.

Ha, I need to stop posting this late

[stuartbert two hats]

19 minutes ago, fraybentos1 said:

The EU regulator approved it for all ages tho?

Some EU countries have been appalling with their dismissive nature and lies about AZ. Macron in particular should be ashamed of himself.

They did, but the German advice was to use the Pfizer vaccine for the 65+ age group, because there was some data.

Macron looks even stupider now. I can't work out whether it was all a calculated way of having a dig, or whether he mixed up a lack of evidence with evidence it didn't work.

A lot of people seem to be doing that - see also Pfizer vaccine dose gap. BTW, I think that debate is more nuanced, since we won't know whether the effectiveness of the second dose will be affected by the longer gap for some time. Although I suspect in the end, the UK decision will turn out to be correct there too - but it's undoubtedly a bigger risk, particularly at the time when we didn't know as much about how well dose one worked after 3-4 weeks.

 

[Leyrulion]

1 hour ago, SheffJeff said:

Niche question here so apologies but can't find anything on Google and I know there's alot of knowledgeable people on here. Does anyone know whether people who have been sectioned have been getting vaccinated? Got a friend who was supposed to get jabbed on Thursday but he went AWOL and is now in hospital. He's high risk (obese, diabetic, asthmatic) so I would have hoped he would be but not sure of the legal aspects of vaccinating someone against their will if they aren't in their right mind. He was over the moon to be vaccinated until Tuesday when for some reason he took a turn. I'm just worried as you hear about so many people catching Covid when they're in hospital. Thanks for any info in advance.

Hey so I am not a medical expert. 

However the elements I do know based on what we've been taught as volunteer vaccinators is that it will be based on his capacity to consent. 

If he doesn't have the capacity to make decisions about his own health it will fall to someone responsible for him to make that decision. 

The example we've been given is in nursing homes. If an elderly person doesn't have capacity to consent and no family to give that their consent for them then a qualified health care professional can make a decision in their best interests that they should receive it.

The issue of consent and capacity is incredibly complex but they will have protocols in place. They'll have to consider the risks to him and the consequences of delay and the likelihood he may be able to consent in the near future.

So basically it's complicated.

[gizmoman]

1 hour ago, SheffJeff said:

Niche question here so apologies but can't find anything on Google and I know there's alot of knowledgeable people on here. Does anyone know whether people who have been sectioned have been getting vaccinated? Got a friend who was supposed to get jabbed on Thursday but he went AWOL and is now in hospital. He's high risk (obese, diabetic, asthmatic) so I would have hoped he would be but not sure of the legal aspects of vaccinating someone against their will if they aren't in their right mind. He was over the moon to be vaccinated until Tuesday when for some reason he took a turn. I'm just worried as you hear about so many people catching Covid when they're in hospital. Thanks for any info in advance.

https://www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/nhs-services/mental-health-services/mental-health-act/

Consent to treatment

If you're held under the Mental Health Act, you can be treated against your will.

This is because it's felt you do not have sufficient capacity to make an informed decision about your treatment at the time.

This is also the case if you refuse treatment but the team treating you believe you should have it.

The CQC provides detailed guidance about your rights in terms of consenting to medication and electroconvulsive therapy if you're detained in hospital or placed on a Community Treatment Order (CTO).

 

That would suggest you could be vaccinated against your will if the medics felt it necessary and you were judged unfit to give consent. On the other hand you could argue that only applies to treatment needed to deal with the mental disorder, so it's not really an answer! I've heard reports that people needing NHS treatment have been told they must be vaccinated before they can go in for treatment but I'm not sure how true that is. Would have thought they would have had to discuss any treatment with next of kin though.