Ah yeah, if is an indication of efficacy over time I’d be very worried. Assume that’s not the case otherwise it’d have made bigger waves…
The vaccines | vaxxed boosted unvaxxed? New poll
- Thread starter Badunk
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I'm not good at finding stats but the delta has been rampant in Lancashire and Bolton for quite a while now, the hospitalisations and deaths there should point the way for everyone else.
My girlfriend is doing the same for now, which makes me seriously pissed off. And she is not that dumb, to be fair, but read some stupid report (which was later debunked) and doesn’t want to get the vaccine (for now). She actually had some mild to moderate version of covid last December so she might still have some protection, but it is still ridiculous.
Basically, extremely well after 2 doses, especially at the 4 weeks plus mark (which is where almost all over 70s are now:
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For anyone trying to get their heads round some of the stats - like why more vaccinated people may die than unvaccinated you could take a look at:
https://www.covid-datascience.com/p...ut-the-delta-variant-are-the-vaccines-working
or in summary - it's because almost all deaths used to occur in the oldest age groups and these are now more or less entirely vaccinated, so anything less than 100% vaccine perfection is still enough to show up in cases and deaths, and will actually show up more as we vaccinate younger people as well.
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Surprised take up has slowed over last week, regularly under 100k daily now. What happened given the reporting that hundreds of thousands of under 25s had booked their appointments a few weeks back unless they'd had it already.
Still 86.4% which I think is current percentage is pretty good going, what estimate of uptake would people on here have predicted if you have to guess in early December? I'd have gone for low 80s which would be all of the population.
Still 86.4% which I think is current percentage is pretty good going, what estimate of uptake would people on here have predicted if you have to guess in early December? I'd have gone for low 80s which would be all of the population.
It’s a mad uptake looking at it from the global point of view, in Lithuania we’re swimming in Pfizer vaccine now and over the last few weeks vaccination rate has been very low (gone up from 41% to 46%) due to general vaccine hesitancy throughout the adult population. I would say the cap here is likely to be around 55%, so seeing UK uptake levels makes you jealous.
Yeah likely the majority of those had it within a couple of weeks at most, I booked mine the morning it opened up to U25s and was jabbed the day after so imagine a lot were similarly as quick.
I agree. My daughter is far from dumb having gone to Oxford uni and got a first.
Yep. In general, I thought that most anti-vaxxers are quite stupid, but then you see people that are fairly intelligent but whom refuse to vaccinate.
Not everyone who refuses to vaccinate against Covid is a general "anti-vaxxer". Smallpox has a lethality of 30 %, even higher among small children and babies.
With Covid over 40 % don't even notice that they have it and it mainly kills the 70+. For a healthy 29 year old the chance to die from Covid is less than 1:100,000.
So I have no issues with smallpox vaccinations or Covid vaccinations for the vulnerable but I'm not going to take an experimental vaccine against a 1:100,000 chance for my age group.
Now Biontech/Pfizer say that a 3rd vaccination will be needed and after another 6 - 12 months they'll magically figure out that you'll need a yearly vaccination like against the flu even though this was negated a few months ago.
With Covid over 40 % don't even notice that they have it and it mainly kills the 70+. For a healthy 29 year old the chance to die from Covid is less than 1:100,000.
So I have no issues with smallpox vaccinations or Covid vaccinations for the vulnerable but I'm not going to take an experimental vaccine against a 1:100,000 chance for my age group.
Now Biontech/Pfizer say that a 3rd vaccination will be needed and after another 6 - 12 months they'll magically figure out that you'll need a yearly vaccination like against the flu even though this was negated a few months ago.
I thought this figure of 85% back in November for the UK felt about right, and it was in line with vaccine hesitancy figures captured in a few different ways. This was before the AZ debacle so I thought it might drop to around 80%, and then it just depended on what kind of incentives (economy, travel etc.) would be leveraged and how effective the out-reach would be to hard-to-reach groups.
The population's response has been really positive and the seamless distribution of the vaccine has played a big part in that. I suspect rebounding fears about the new variant helped too, and the government did a good job of getting out of the way in operations and comms. Remains to be seen how effective the out-reach will be for those final groups but I suspect everyone will struggle there.
@Wibble, what do you think of the UK's vaccination numbers given how strongly you believed they would screw up this bit like they've screwed up everything else?
Thought this was a useful overview on potential vaccine take up given some of the international comparisons made here. It's a very limited question as we know perceptions of safety play a big role, so acceptance is conditional and this makes some assumptions. But broadly speaking it lines up with what was reported before (about covid in June, about vaccines 2 years ago) in terms of where countries fit on the spectrum. France, Hungary, Poland and Russia the biggest vaccine sceptics, China the biggest vaccine adopters, Australia and UK high up the list. I would be sceptical of Brazil and India being so high up there as online surveys disproportionately represent people in higher socioeconomic classes there (China too), and higher socioeconomic classes are bigger adopters of vaccines everywhere.
The notion that the UK are particularly wary of the vaccine because of government feckups doesn't seem to hold up. Most people want to take it and most people just want to be reassured that it's being done properly. P-values just don't communicate that to people without a science or statistics degree (and we know education plays a role, even in strongly pro-vaccine Australia).
There are other variables besides life and death. But if death is the only thing you're focusing on, the odds are really stacked in the vaccine's favour. If you're going to consider other effects of the vaccine, to make it a balanced assessment you need to consider other effects of covid.
I don’t think there would be anything magical about figuring it out. It was pretty clear for a year now that we will need boosters, and it was clear since January 2020 that we will need to learn living with covid and won’t ever go away.
Do you have to pay for your vaccination?
Do those figures suggest that AZ is better for hospitalisation after two shots by a fairly significant amount on Delta compared to Alpha? If so I find that a bit surprising. It probably at least shows that it's just as effective against Delta than Alpha considering the number of people who have AZ in the UK.
Could that also be attributed to the shorter dosing intervals they were using?
Potentially but we don’t yet have any evidence that increasing the interval gives more durable protection.
I suspect that's probably more to do with smaller sample sizes (higher variability) and no controls on populations or incidents (which do vary a fair bit). Given it is worse at preventing symptomatic covid it would be unlikely that it's better at protecting against hospitalisation, just natural variation that you get when you move outside of the randomised controlled trials. In general though yeah I'd say there's good reason to believe there's not that much difference in how well it protects against severe covid. I'd still rather have Pfizer if they'd given me the option! But I personally feel reassured by the data.
Wales has hit 90% (adults) and it's hoped that the whole of the UK may get there. Unfortunately first dose vaccinations have slowed right down over the last week or two. Fewer bookings. fewer people showing up at walk-in centres. Whether we've hit the tough bit of the vaccine rollout now isn't clear. Previously demand has outstripped supply so hesitancy hasn't been much of an issue (though access has) but we know from opinion surveys and from actual vaccination takeup reports that there are large numbers of young black adults in particular who say they won't take it.
We also have hundreds of thousands of unvaxxed people who can't have a jab (positive covid test in the past month) and maybe as many who are supposed to be in quarantine (alert from app or test and trace) this week.
There's also a suggestion that the momentum has dropped out of the vaccine drive party due to the national mixed messaging. A lot of the under 30s in particular didn't feel as if they personally were at risk, but were willing to get a jab, to help get the epidemic under control. Now the government is saying that everything is opening, and that most people who catch it won't die or show up at hospital so we're not that fussed anymore. Hence, that kind of "get vaccinated to stop the pandemic" feeling has gone from the messaging in favour of "we don't care how many catch it."
Incidentally some of the vaccine centres are reporting large numbers of no shows - particularly on the days England play and the day after, so maybe demand will go up next week. The changes in foreign travel rules have probably been announced too late to give the program a major boost now, but maybe there will be some incentive there as well.
There seems to be a quirk happening with AZ that it's effectiveness appears to keep improving in the month after the second dose (not the 10/14 days that people use as standard for full protection). In the UK, the over 70s were almost all double vaxxed by the end of April. We may be seeing peak effectiveness for AZ arriving just in time for Delta.
Lots of other explanations for sure, there are still wide error bars sat on the data but for now we can just take it as a good sign.
Another result that's looking impressive is early data on Moderna first dose v Delta. It's impressive at 70% + (against symptoms) but it's so early in its rollout that again the error bars are big. Plus there's the logistical quirk that the timing of its arrival in the UK mean that it's been used almost entirely with the U30s. Two things stand out there, one is the that the vaccines start work fast in the U30s, the other one is that a high proportion of U30s (40% in some inner cities) have antibodies from infection so the Moderna may be boosting their immunity rather than starting from scratch.
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90% of adults in Wales have now had at least one dose of vaccine and two thirds of adults have had both jabs. Impressively, not only are their wasted/lost doses levels very low it looks like they're getting the maximum they can from every vial.
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The figures are excellent. Bojo et al. Have fecked the pandemic up from day 1 but you can't really criticise how fast they have rolled out the vaccine.
Vaccines seem to be working against Delta. Numbers are low but in this NSW outbreak 79% of hospitalisations are unvaccinated, 21% have had 1 shot and 0% are fully vaccinated.
Isn't close to 80% of the population unvaccinated and around 20% have had 1 dose?
Fully vaccinated seems to be working well.. a single dose might not be as effective against the Indian variant
8.5% fully vaccinated and just over another 17% have had one shot.
The Guardian has an article about people in England getting aggressive at the drop-in centres, because they want second jabs before they're due to have them (to go on holiday abroad). Yes, why not take it out on the nursing and medical staff, you entitled idiots.
https://www.theguardian.com/society...le-seeking-second-covid-jab-early-for-holiday
https://www.theguardian.com/society...le-seeking-second-covid-jab-early-for-holiday
Nothing comes between us English and our two weeks in Spain. fecking idiots!
So the papers are reporting today that the British government expects infection rates to peak in August as it will run out of people to infect. Heard immunity it is then 
Can anyone share what is now the recommended waiting period between doses for Pfizer? I found this document but it is dated for May so I am not sure how up to date it is now:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavi...cination-programme-faqs-on-second-dose-v2.pdf
https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavi...cination-programme-faqs-on-second-dose-v2.pdf
This is actually true - I went to my local hospital for a walk in for my second jab ( it was 8 weeks to the day so I was eligible and I’m definitely not going on holiday) and there were a few chancers there that were getting aggressive when they were denied their early vaccine. Chatting to the brilliant staff outside, it seems that this is now a common occurrence
Then we can do it all over again in the winter with the next nasty variant.So the papers are reporting today that the British government expects infection rates to peak in August as it will run out of people to infect. Heard immunity it is then
Yeah that is what I'd like to know as well. I did see this article from early last month that they're to be reduced to a maximum of eight weeks in Northern Ireland, but in the England everything I see is still 8-12 weeks.
I had my first vaccine (Pfizer) five weeks ago and got a text yesterday from my local PCN saying I've been invited to book my second vaccination with a dedicated link just for me. When I clicked on it the only dates available were 13th and 15th July and it let me book one of them despite not being eight weeks so don't know what is going on, whether they'll turn me away when I turn up or what.
Another caf member told me they had theirs five weeks after the first jab.
Double jabbed yesterday, 8 weeks to the day of my first one. This has hit me a bit harder. Body is aching a bit, pain at injection site and overwhelming tiredness and some on and off headaches, whereas I had hardly anything with the first. It’s still manageable and it hasn’t stopped me doing my chores around the house today so I’m not complaining but my experience of jab two is that it’s definitely worse than the first symptom wise.
Makes sense I guess - my body has probably got its bouncers in place and is being more aggressive to kicking the “virus” ass out of the club.
Makes sense I guess - my body has probably got its bouncers in place and is being more aggressive to kicking the “virus” ass out of the club.
Pfizer say 3 weeks. That's what they are doing in the US and other countries.
UK Govt is doing 8-12 weeks because they wanted to maximise first doses, and have cited some fairly flimsy evidence that longer gap = better immune response. One dose doesn't do much against the Delta variant though, so many people trying to get it earlier.
Pfizer say 4 weeks actually.
Do you have a source for that? Have only ever seen them say 21 days.
https://www.pfizer.ca/statement-pfizer-position-dosing-intervals-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine
If you got a local invite that's because the local area is ready for you - either because they've been prioritised or because they don't have to hold as much back for people who need first doses.
It's the walk-in centres where the arguments are happening, as availability varies from postcode to postcode, and even day to day. It's basically a supply issue, they've enough Pfizer for everyone but they can't maintain the 8 weeks pattern for everyone if too many people get it after four, and they need to hold some for first doses. It looks like Moderna has arrived as the joker in the pack though because basically every Moderna first dose effectively frees up a slot for an early Pfizer second dose...
Thank you, that has put my mind at ease.
Public Health England accused of misleading cancer patients on Covid jab
Blood Cancer UK calls on chief medical officer to correct statement that double vaccination is ‘highly effective in clinical risk groups’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ed-of-misleading-cancer-patients-on-covid-jab
Blood Cancer UK calls on chief medical officer to correct statement that double vaccination is ‘highly effective in clinical risk groups’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ed-of-misleading-cancer-patients-on-covid-jab