Happy beta testing to all Brits then!
That will take until February or so to complete.
1. Long-term care residents/staff
2. Hospital workers
3. Anyone 85+ years old.
Priority ranking is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-f...
Though this is generic and should change depending on the results on vaccine trials (should there be evidence of differential effectiveness).
* older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers
* all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers
* all those 75 years of age and over
* all those 70 years of age and over
* all those 65 years of age and over
* high-risk adults under 65 years of age
* moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age
* all those 60 years of age and over
* all those 55 years of age and over
* all those 50 years of age and over
* rest of the population (priority to be determined)
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-f...
That is:
1. Immunize the age group that is dominating in the hospitalization statistics, then 2. Immunize the age group is accounting for the majority of transmission, then 3. Immunize the rest.
There's a good chance that situation will create a black market both for vaccines (real and fake) and forged proof of vaccination.
The UK government has ruled out having a vacination passport (for good reason in my opinion).
The UK government changed their mind about a second lockdown given new evidence. The virus got much worse and they responded. What new evidence is there that the UK government is going to start vaccination passports? Has something changed?
That's the wrong question. The right one is "may something change in the future?" And an answer on this: "maybe, we don't know, nobody knows the future".
That being said, extrapolation of the exponential curve a month forward is one of relatively simple ways to predict the future. And yet, it was _completely_ unexpected for the UK government. Think about that.
Strong opinions, loosely held.
At first glance forgery seems like a very real threat considering how hard it is to tell vaccine from sodium chloride (entire testing procedures are based on this), but the same difficulty is also working against a black market: why pay if the seller can't give event the slightest indication that it's not a fake and the fake has no intrinsic value at all? You'd have to fake the distribution structures and not the product and an elaborate fake structure isn't something that suddenly pops up from some dark market investment, it could only evolve from simpler black market schemes. But those won't happen, at least not in time (except maybe in places with a truly corrupt regular distribution system, where it would start with "redistributed" real vaccine and then slowly shift over to fakes)
I have no doubt there are some pretty interesting models being developed to determine the best course of action.
So we don't know how beneficial your 2 above would be.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/941030?src=soc_tw_20111...
The results announced up to now just showed that the vaccines reduce chance of a vaccinated person becoming sick.
Where do I sign up?!
If the goal is to slow down the pandemic, then the "irresponsible spreaders" should be vaccinated first.
On the other side, if the goal is to punish "irresponsible spreaders", then they should be vaccinated last. But that also means that pandemics would not be slowed down, and the ones taking that decision will be responsible for further spreading.
Or you could go by demographics. The hardest hit groups in the worst spreading areas. Etc.
You're right that it's not a trivial thing, but if you wanted to do it, reasonable approximations could be found.
HN-ians like to model stuff, and i get that. To do it properly we need to know how many "young"(active ppl) there are, how many old with lung problems, the rates of propagation in and between those, and probably other stuff. But the goal is to keep the deaths down, and my opinion is that by far the smartest way is to first vaccinate the vulnerable people and those who deal with them directly (nurses, etc.). There's also a lot of points about practicality. For example; If i get infected not much happens (i'd just have to isolate myself, even with heavier symptoms). But if my mother gets those severe symptoms she would need to go to the hospital, if she would live at all.
Even if the math says it's better to vaccinate the young ones first, i'd still argue that it's overall safer to vaccinate the vulnerable ones first.
I believe that most experts are expecting it won't.
> The final decision on the prioritisation for health and social care workers will be dependent on vaccine characteristics and the epidemiology at the start of any programme.
Which hospital / trust are you with? I had mine done at Royal Free.
Care homes are all mostly small, with a handful of employees.
EDIT: Wales has just said it's going to be really hard getting the Pfizer vaccine out to care homes: https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinical-areas/immunology-...
Support dropped by 20%. Surprisingly, it dropped by about the same amount for both the political right & left, although support on the left started at a higher level. This may indicate that even people on the right were influenced by the perception of a too-rapid approval process.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/09/17/u-s-public-no...
The more people that get vaccinated, I think the easier it'll be to start vaccinating more and start getting back to normal fingers crossed
Selfishly, I guess we should be happy that there is an anti-vaxxer sentiment; it means the rest of us will get our vaccines faster.
I find this ridiculous considering the massive challenge we have ahead of us just to get the vaccine to the millions of people who desperately want it.
Sure, if we get to the point where everyone who wants the vaccine has had it, and there are still people dying from COVID, then we can discuss illiberal measures to increase vaccine take-up. (I'd still be opposed to them).
Getting worked up about this stuff when not a single person (outside of the trial groups) has been vaccinated yet just demonstrates our politicians' (on all sides) tendency towards authoritarianism.
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-11-10/covid-vaccine-will-enoug...
...to no longer be a threat to an unvaccinated person.
This isn't like the childhood vaccines, where we need herd immunity to protect the children who are too young to be vaccinated.
Provided that everyone who wants the vaccine can get it, I don't see the problem with letting everyone else make their own decision.
The current priority list of people is nowhere near 70% of the population anyway. Most people under 50 won't have the opportunity to be vaccinated for months. So this absolutely is a theoretical problem, at least for now.
Given that Covid is such a mild disease for most young people, I predict that by the time the elderly and vulnerable have been vaccinated, this will be a non-issue anyway.
This whole thing becomes moot once the vulnerable are vaccinated, no need for creepy immunity passports.
It wasn't healing and it turned out he had an undetected issue processing folic acid I believe, which has an effect on how your body heals from neurological damage. He's recovering now after 3 months but has to take folic acid and other supplements 5 times a day.
Other friends have had persistent diminished lung capacity for months on end; these are folks who had no co-morbidities and in their 20s.
However, through my partner I am friends with many classical singers. They are absolutely worried about damaging their instrument.
It's not only too young children who might not be legitimately unvaccinated...some people who are immunocompromised or otherwise medically unable to take certain vaccines must also rely on herd immunity for protection.
https://immunizebc.ca/sites/default/files/graphics/vaccine-s...
Pandemics have, since time immemorial, been an exception to the "I can do what I want" rule.
Much like allowing parents to fall into conspiracy theory traps and refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated against measles, resulting in that disease suddenly becoming a threat again, if we're going to get back to normalcy we can't let half the population ignore the vaccine.
But, since we are going to let half the population ignore the vaccine, prepare for a long, drawn-out period of time during which the disease will flare up, lockdowns will be imposed, more people will needlessly die, and conspiracy theories will continue to make a mockery of civilization.
People who do take the vaccine are likely still able to spread the virus.
The pandemic is not going to go quietly any time soon.
Restricting social interaction and business is a crushing approach to solving the problem, with severe consequences to health and economics. It's brute force, like securing a computer using an air gap. The only reason lockdowns have been used in 2020 is because we have no other options available, but a free and readily-available vaccine changes the calculus.
Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry, if I ever said my FDA approved drug was "safe and effective" I'd have the FDA dropping the hammer on me.
The FDA does not prove a drug is safe. No drug is 100% safe. The FDA determines whether the risks of the treatment are outweighed by the benefit.
I have no doubt that additional safety signals will pop up from Covid vaccines as the treated population expands by 100x. Most likely they will not be severe and the risk will still outweight the benefit.
But to say "we've tested the vaccine on a 15,000 people so we know it's safe to vaccinate 1B+ people" is not something the FDA would agree with.
To me a chainsaw is a safe tool to use. Dangerous, but safe. To others it is not. Is a chainsaw a "safe" tool?
No drug is safe, but in this case, not taking a drug is not safe. If it's safe enough to vaccinate 15,000 people, when 300 of them are expected to die without vaccination, it's incredibly unlikely that side effects discovered on 1 billion people will not make the vaccine the safe choice.
Happens extremely rarely though.
And the FDA itself talks about approved drugs being safe and effective: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-information-consumers/fdas-dr...
The FDA is incredibly strict when it comes to advertising. I remember reading about one violation where the ad had a tagline for an ADHD medication "So you can concentrate on the important things" and showed a picture of a child studying. The FDA said "the image implies that your medication will improve the ability of a child to study and you have submitted no data to the FDA to support this claim".