Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Michael W]

24 minutes ago, RiG said:

Johnson has said they are looking to open 24/7 vaccination centres ASAP.

ETA: Maybe I've imagined this but I am sure I saw mention of a country (or multiple countries) looking to minimise vaccine wastage by offering soon to expire vaccines on a first come first served basis to ordinary Joe Bloggs.

Hancock was ruling it out yesterday on the grounds there was no demand. 

Is... another u-turn forthcoming.?

[renton]

7 minutes ago, virginton said:

What happened to the end of January targets?

They aren't getting the supply to do it?

(Presuming you mean the million by end of January quote)

 

Edited January 13, 2021 by renton

[Aubrey Maturin]

3 minutes ago, virginton said:

What happened to the end of January targets?

Just going to airbrush them.

2 minutes ago, Paco said:

Yeah there’s absolutely no chance of that happening. What the f**k is Freeman thinking by saying such shite?

Working on it beginning on March 1st, and removing worrying about the 12-week cycle that means people come back for a second dose, you could give one dose to every man, woman and child in Scotland by mid-May and everyone would’ve had their second dose by the end of August. When you bear in mind not everyone will take a vaccine, some will be advised not to take it, and kids don’t get it, you’re probably looking at it being sewn up by mid-July. The UK Gov have suggested everyone will be offered a first dose ‘by autumn’.

Outright lunacy from Freeman. Clearly won’t happen.

Freeman setting herself up to be the sacrificial lamb for impending balls up I reckon.

[Billy Jean King]

I wish the "vaccination gives us a route back to a more normal life" gets binned soon, and replaced by "a normal life"

JVT today has said he now believes the vaccines will not provide unending protection so "normal" as we knew it before is not happening. A rolling, ongoin vaccination will be required and that program can only be established once science knows fully how long each vaccine is going to last for. That will in effect only be discovered the "hard way" he stated in that we won't know until cases and thus hospitalizations and deaths start rising again and so the cycle will start again.

Normal as we knew it will take several years I suspect although plenty will say f**k it and try to return to normal. The new normal will be a cycle albeit less extreme hopefully than the last 10 months until we get everyone vulnerable onto a cycle of vaccination that will adequately protect them. That is going to take a couple of "cycles" at least.

[Big Fifer]

It's absolutely laughable for any government to just be "considering" 24/7 vaccinations, or suggesting there's no demand. Firstly, where they've got that there's no demand I will never know. Secondly, whilst having a similarly low amount of evidence, I would guarantee the overwhelming majority would be fine, for one night, to get up for their vaccine at ridiculous o'clock if it means restrictions were binned 1 or 2 months earlier. Leave the over 80s and vulnerable during the day. The rest of us can and will compromise. 

[RiG]

3 minutes ago, Michael W said:

Hancock was ruling it out yesterday on the grounds there was no demand. 

Is... another u-turn forthcoming.?

Seems that way - BBC Live Update.

 

[vikingTON]

1 minute ago, renton said:

They aren't getting the supply to do it?

 

Pish. The supplies are there right now to vaccinate tens of thousands more and it isn't happening. The SG confirmed that it woul receive 900k doses by the end of January in trying to walk back from Freeman's 'one million by the end of January' claim. They'll get nowhere near that done.

Shifting the goalposts a full month back, only to no doubt get the same piss-poor excuses is unacceptable. Heads should be rolling at the end of this month.

[The Stig]

10 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

1.4m by 28 Feb. That is All over 65s plus the clinically vulnerable. All still on target says NS right now.

Daily flapping at a target of 28 Feb is mental.

due to you seemingly believing everything the NS says at the moment, would you consider a wee £10 charity bet as  i don't think there is a hope they will meet the 1.4m people (not vaccines) done by the 28 February 

[renton]

2 minutes ago, virginton said:

Pish. The supplies are there right now to vaccinate tens of thousands more and it isn't happening. The SG confirmed that it woul receive 900k doses by the end of January in trying to walk back from Freeman's 'one million by the end of January' claim. They'll get nowhere near that done.

Shifting the goalposts a full month back, only to no doubt get the same piss-poor excuses is unacceptable. Heads should be rolling at the end of this month.

Well, it looks like they are being given or have been given a total of 496,565 doses by the end of January, and we don't have that total in inventory just now as there is 150k awaiting delivery.

Edited January 13, 2021 by renton

[Caledonian1]

3 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

As of now, a rate of 215k per week is needed to achieve that. With each passing day that rate climbs higher.

It's not flapping at all to ask how, and when, we can expect the gap between the current rate of 112k per week (based on 16k x 7) and 215k per week will be closed.

1,100 vaccination centres - I know they will be of varying sizes and opening hours (some 24 hours).  A target of 400,000 of week is an average of 364 per centre or an average of 52 per day per centre.  It's not impossible as long as vaccine supply can meet demand.  Flu jags can be administered by GP practices and medical centres without too much fuss and in almost assembly line fashion so I do not see this as impossible (again, dependent on supply)

[Billy Jean King]

What happened to the end of January targets?

What end January target ?

The Freeman end Jan 1m was never a target. Someone even posted verbatim her speech . It was I'll judged speculation before we ever knew how supply would work.

All over 65 and clinically vulnerable by 1 March has always been the target with the hope over 80s within that by sooner.

On that basis we should see a spring relaxation (mid April onwards) assuming it works . The only indicator to relaxation will be substantial reduction in deaths and hospitalizations, vaccine numbers are irrelevant to that. Until that happens nothing can or should be relaxed.

[Billy Jean King]

Freeman setting herself up to be the sacrificial lamb for impending balls up I reckon.

She's already "sacrificed " herself by announcing her retirement.

[Todd_is_God]

2 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

JVT today has said he now believes the vaccines will not provide unending protection so "normal" as we knew it before is not happening.

More unsubstantiated goalpost shifting.

Quite sad you seem so accepting of a never ending cycle of restrictions tbh.

[Caledonian1]

8 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

As of now, a rate of 215k per week is needed to achieve that. With each passing day that rate climbs higher.

It's not flapping at all to ask how, and when, we can expect the gap between the current rate of 112k per week (based on 16k x 7) and 215k per week will be closed.

You are aware that the Vauxhall Astra Zeneca vaccine was only available from Monday (later in the day in most cases) so to extrapolate from historical figures when we only had Pfizer vaccine available (and numerous public holidays) is not a true reflection of what is possible moving forward.  Try and be more positive....you may even like it?

[vikingTON]

Just now, renton said:

Well, it looks like they are being given or have been given a total of 496,565 doses by the end of January.

Which doesn't in any way change the fact that heads should roll for failing to meet their own target at the end of this month. A Health minister overseeing the biggest vaccination programme in decades should be aware of her supply brief before setting targets in front of Parliament. And the scope of the failure raises serious questions about Sturgeon's judgment in giving this clown responsibility.

[Cyclizine]

34 minutes ago, SoapMactavish said:

Its hard to say in all fairness as it isn’t something I’ve noticed before with other conditions.

Perhaps its similar but its likely the sheer number of infections that are causing the amount of people I am seeing with more chronic symptoms. 

2018-2019 was a bad flu year numbers wise but there was not a notable amount of people coming in months later.

Could just be observer bias that I didn’t notice it before, but its signifcant if you see 30 patients referred for chest imaging and around half of them have previous covid infection and ongoing symptoms. 

Lung function tests and imaging mainly for physical symptoms. A significant amount of folk have lasting damage visible on chest x-rays months and months after which isn’t the case with the majority of respiratory infections.

Its a strange old disease, some people were presenting (and still are) with fairly mild symptoms but a horrendous looking chest (insert kenneth williams image here) and silent hypoxia.

If it wasn’t so much of a pain in the arse it would be really interesting to study. 

 

I agree with this. I think the caveat is that we're in relatively early days yet, so we don't really know what the long-term sequelae are. From our ICU perspective, the ones who survive admission are almost universally severely functionally limited, difficulty is, so are many people post-ICU admission. No one ever really gets back to their previous baseline after prolonged ICU admission, but there are definitely prospective studies following these folk up.

Folk who have had less severe disease seem to be on a spectrum with the classic post-viral fatigue syndrome, all the way up to debilitating breathlessness, weakness, etc. We do see objective evidence of organ damage (CT, pulmonary function tests etc), but as you say, this doesn't always reflect the severity of the original illness or convalescent symptoms.

What I've been really impressed with is how rapidly we've co-ordinated research and got data out. One of the advantages of the NHS structure, I guess. A lot of PhDs, MDs and papers are going to come out of this over the next few years.

Edited January 13, 2021 by Cyclizine

[Hedgecutter]

8 minutes ago, Steven W said:

If NS thinks those changes will have any effect on the infection rate she's living in cloud cukoo land.

I think the takeaway one will tbh.  Most takeaways I see have at least some folk waiting inside beside one another.  One that my other half saw the other day had the delivery guy maskless just sitting on his phone beside folk in the waiting room.

[Billy Jean King]

due to you seemingly believing everything the NS says at the moment, would you consider a wee £10 charity bet as  i don't think there is a hope they will meet the 1.4m people (not vaccines) done by the 28 February 

f**k me betting on life saving injections, get a grip !

They seem pretty satisfied they remain on target so let's wait and see. It will become apparent if there are problems much nearer the deadline.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

25 minutes ago, virginton said:

Micromanaging a logistical roll-out of vaccines seems like a better use of Swinney's poindexter mindset than an education brief that he's completely floundering in. Freeman should have been put in the corner and told to play with a detached computer keyboard months ago instead of overseeing the most important public health programmes in decades.

Thing is at government level you only really lead the strategy don’t you? So that to me suggests that the disjointedness absolutely does come from Freeman, if there was a coherent strategy we wouldnt have 1 health board doing 1 thing and another doing the opposite. Ive said for weeks and months, get the vaccine fired out to as many folk as possible, if that means you have people in the vaccination teams sitting for a couple of weeks because they’ve gone jaggy jaggy very quickly then they absolutely can be redeployed and brought back in for next batches. The idea some are floating on here of ‘lets not go too fast so the vaccine team arent sitting around 2 weeks on friday’ is mad, if they can get 400,000 vaccines done give them all next friday off, they’d deserve it. 

[Todd_is_God]

3 minutes ago, Caledonian1 said:

1,100 vaccination centres - I know they will be of varying sizes and opening hours (some 24 hours).  A target of 400,000 of week is an average of 364 per centre or an average of 52 per day per centre.  It's not impossible as long as vaccine supply can meet demand.  Flu jags can be administered by GP practices and medical centres without too much fuss and in almost assembly line fashion so I do not see this as impossible (again, dependent on supply)

OK. Let's assume that your optimism bears fruit, and we are able to vaccinate our entire population every 13½ weeks.

We could bin restrictions entirely and forever by end of July.

Why would the SG not be beaming and shouting about this?