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Comment by nickcotter | Hacker News Reader

Good news but still a long way to go. How's it going to be rolled out? Here in the UK we have tried and failed to get a regular flu jab (our GPs have run out of a very small supply and the pharmacies don't have any to sell) and I'm not optimistic about our chances of getting this next year or whenever it arrives.

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I think you might be surprised. The government knows that this is the silver bullet they need to rescue the economy from oblivion.

I’m expecting that once this thing is ready there’ll be a logistical effort for the history books to roll it out. See what they can do with the military involved, like the nightingales.

Sad to say, given how testing, lockdown, etc. has proceeded, I'm losing confidence that most western governments are capable of any "logistical efforts for the history books" at this point.

I heard a lot of bluster about testing here in Ontario in the spring, but here we are in the fall with rationing of tests again.

Testing in Waterloo Region was really good over the summer— minimal wait times, multiple drive-in sites, results turned around in 24-36hrs. I think they just failed to account for the bump that would come from school starting and people wanting to get tested in advance of Thanksgiving.

I think the "military involved" piece is key, especially if you're talking about the US. It's maybe a bit trite at this point, but a lot of comparisons were made about the stark contrast in how quickly a national response mobilized in response to BLM protests vs the pandemic. The basic takeaway being: executive priorities matter, and even Trump has made it clear on a number of occasions that getting the vaccine out is important to him.

I guess that's the thing; the gov't is the one who made the decision to bring kids back fulltime, how incompetent do you have to be to not know there'd be a bump in testing demands?

Re: Waterloo region, I work at Google Waterloo, so although I don't live in KW (I'm in rural Flamborough) most of my coworkers do. I had one who showed up at 7am to get a test, lineups were around several blocks and they shut the whole thing down because people were getting rude. He then had to wait a bit and drive to Guelph. People were driving out from Toronto to London, Woodstock, etc. to get tests.

In our industry if we provisioned data centres or server instances like this, we'd be in a bit of trouble, no?

EDIT: FWIW I have a political leaning and bias towards a strong public sector and am a big believer in public service. I'm not one of those "government can't do anything right" and "less government is better" types. But I do think that several decades of "government can't do anything right" people being a dominant cultural and political force now means that government can no longer do anything right. We're losing our ability to act collectively :-(

Oh yeah, definitely. Can't help thinking of how much better things would likely be if we'd had a Horwath administration through this crisis. :(

I like Horwath but I think her admin would have faced insurmountable ideological opposition, the same way Rae did. And then the whole COVID response would have been framed in those terms, as a right-left politicization like it is in the US. At least now, with a right wing government administrating the COVID response, only the far lunatic right (cough Randy Hillier cough) has politicized it. For conservatives, it's "their guy" delivering the tough medicine, and they just blame Trudeau for anything they don't like, even things the feds have nothing to do with. While it hasn't been great the management of this situation is not _nearly_ as bad as it could be. Just look at Jason Kenney's gov't.

I suspect the government will magically be much better at logistical efforts when there's a clear economic pay-off. Neoliberalism might not be great when it comes to helping the little man, but I suspect it can swiftly get its act together when it comes to a short-term solution to economic malaise.

Or at least I hope so.

> I'm losing confidence that most western governments are capable of any "logistical efforts for the history books"

Oh, they are. Just don't ask too many questions about money disappearing in the darker corners of such effort.

I am glad that western governments are not capable of lockdown.

For what it's worth, our testing has steadily increased since then. Perhaps we ought to expect more than "steadily", but the recent rationing is more to do with dramatic uptick in demand for tests (schools reopening, immediately followed by Thanksgiving) than with a change in capacity.

There's no way (AFAICT) to link to it directly, but try charting "Total tests completed in the last day" and "Under Investigation": https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/status-of-covid-19-cases-in-...

Oh well it could very well be for the history books.

History isn't always happy and positive, you know.

Can I check: are you in the priority group for flu jabs?

Because GPs (in England, I don't know about the other nations) should have enough stock. They are prioritising higher need first, and then the expanded programme later in the year, and then anyone else who wants one after that.

If you're not priority need you can try a pharmacist.

According to my GP they had a batch for the over 65s but they ran out pretty quickly. I usually get free flu jabs due to asthma but although it's strongly recommended I'm not aware of it being a definite priority group.

Suggest trying again with your GP. I'm also in a lower-priority group and didn't get the jab during the first round, but my local surgery contacted me later when stocks had been replenished.

Aside: It was, for the NHS, an exceptionally efficient process. I was given an exact time slot and was in and out in less than three minutes.

Pharmacists don't have them available. Boots for example are "working hard to acquire additional stock" but have suspended their service.

I'm in the priority group for a flu jab and I managed to get a jab from a pharmacy no problem. YMMV, though.

"but still a long way to go"

It's actually an "indeterminate way to go". Assuming it is "long" has no factual basis. Phase 3 results could be released literally any day now, and good results would lead to government approvals in the following weeks.

You're right, it could be anytime soon. But I was more concerned with what comes after that: distribution, stock piling etc.

I'm not sure if I can share details but there is emergency vaccine work going on in the UK. The NHS has been using the winter flu vaccines this year as a way to test systems for future rollouts, such as a covid vaccine.

They are manufacturing it already supposedly. But I think the current UK plan is not to vaccinate everyone, but to start with the high risk groups. Perhaps they will then expand out to everyone else later.

They have massively expanded the flu jab programme in the UK this year (to try and avoid hospital overloading) so thats one of the reasons flu jab is in short supply. Apparently its mainly a logistics problem, the doses are there, somewhere, see: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/04/gp-surgeries...

Here in Canada we were able to get our flu shot at our family doctor's last week, but it was kind of a "first come first served" and "you have to ask about it" scenario. My employer usually does a flu shot clinic at work every year, but as we're all home we were not able to do that. In some ways there's been more barriers to getting it than in previous years, despite it being more urgent to do so.

If this was rolled out properly people would be actively contacted by phone, etc. with assistance on how to get it. That's the kind of aggressive roll-out I'm hoping we see if/when a COVID19 vaccine becomes available.

What sources are you using here? The UK has one of the best vaccination coverage rates in the world, and the largest ever roll out of the winter flu jab is well underway (reaching a record breaking ~50% of the population).

I was able to get the flu jab easily in Scotland (as was my wife and my daughter is getting it tomorrow). It was incredibly well organised.

I think if you are unlucky it can be hard to get, but it is rolling out fast and many people are thankfully able to get it.

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